Me, Myself, and My Reflection
by Irony-chan
Summary: Off hiatus and active again! A sequel to 'Mixed Doubles': three copies, finding thesmelves being hunted for something the originals did, set out to get to the bottom of things. What IS a copy, and can such a being have a place in the world?
1. Prologue: the Shadow Reflectors

Author's note: This is a sequel to 'Mixed Doubles' (http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=599030). If you haven't read the other story, this one WILL confuse you. Trust me. This prologue should clear *some* of it up... but I make no guaruntees whatsoever.  
  
Rian wanted to tell the story himself. I didn't want to let him, but you don't tell clones of Lina Inverse what to do... even if you did invent them.  
  
---  
  
The original Shadow Reflector was created by a man named Shazall Rugandi... widely considered one of the greatest sorcerers who ever lived. He intended the Reflector to be the ultimate weapon; when invoked, it would creat a precise duplicate of anybody who's reflection was captured in it's surface, right down to their skills and memories. However, the duplicate's *personality* would be the exact opposite of the original's... so if the mirror were used to duplicate an enemy, the clones would be loyal to Rugandi, and the more his foe hated him, the more strongly the duplicate's would fight for Rugandi's cause. He thought he'd be able to beat anybody, no matter how powerful, by fighting them with two or three of themselves.  
  
That was the theory, anyway. In practice, it didn't quite work out that way.  
  
The Reflector mirror was rediscovered a couple of years back by a sorcerer named Lagen, who meant to use it in order to take over the world. Fortunately, though, a certain handsome and charming young sorcerer (along with his nicely stacked but otherwise useless sidekick) came to the rescue, and Lagen and his army of scruffy werewolves were rounded up and turned over to the authorities for proper discipline. Just another brilliant victory for yours truly.  
  
In the process, Nagha and I discovered that the Shadow Reflector was actually a flawed piece of magic... this is quite the story, but I don't think I have time to tell it here... and the mirror itself was *accidentally* broken.  
  
The Professional Magicians' Society (not among the world's more pretigious sorcerers' guilds... but I sure like their acronym) was just a little peeved about this. We *explained* that it wasn't our fault; this stuff *happens* when you're fighting off a dozen werewolves and an evil sorcerer. But they'd wanted the Reflector for their research, so for a suitable fee we showed them were the bits were before getting on our way.  
  
The PMS (Nagha never found this funny... girls have no sense of humour) were able to take the shards of the mirror and reconstruct the spell Rugandi had used in creating it. After a little experimenting, they figured out how to remove the bug in the enchantment, so that new Reflectors made using the formula would create perfect copies instead of Rugandi's opposite personality ones. The mirrors are mostly curiosities; they're too expensive and too difficult to make for them to really be a practical alternative to the copying techniques that grew out of the study of chimaeras.  
  
To those with certain specialized interests, though, they can be particularly useful. And the guy my *second* nicely-stacked but otherwise useless sidekick (I seem to attract big-breasted women who don't wear much clothing... go figure) and I were hired to deliver a Reflector to must've had some *very* specialized interests, indeed.  
  
You see, the copying spell turned out to be quite flexible. Rugandi probably built this in: most likely he worked out a spell that would make exact copies first, then modified it to produce the result he wanted. This guy Gloria and I had to take this one mirror to wanted (and don't ask me why... I avoided finding out because I'm pretty sure I'm happier not knowing) to alter it so that the duplicate would have not the opposite personality, but the opposite *sex*. Like I said. *Really* specialized interests.  
  
Halfway there, Gloria and I managed to have a little accident with the Reflector, and we ended up with these annoying genderbent clones of ourselves following us around for a while. We got rid of them after we delivered the mirror, and we don't know where they went after that... nor do we care.  
  
This story isn't about them, anyway. This story is about *me*, and what I'm working up to here is this:  
  
I am *not* Lina Inverse.  
  
Got that? Because it's a mistake a lot of people seem to make. Lina is my female clone, and trust me, I'm roundly ashamed of it. I promise you I'm *not* as hard to get along with... in fact, I'm really a pretty nice guy, if I do say so myself. And I do.  
  
Anyway, now that we've cleared that up, make yourself comfortable. I'm going to tell you a story. 


	2. 1: Beets and Rubies

Author's Note... gee, I could make a habit of these. For anybody wanting to know what Rian looks like: http://hammer.prohosting.com/~windcker/riancolour.jpg  
  
---  
  
It was a dark and stormy night...  
  
Sorry, but I've always wanted to say that.  
  
Actually, it had been pouring rain steadily ever since Monday. That was the day we'd run into a bandit gang who were trying to rob a caravan taking taxes to the capital... needless to say, Gloria and myself showed them the error of their ways. There was just a *little* damage done to the wagons in the process, but the tax collectors were nevertheless very grateful and even gave us several big bags of gold as a reward. Then they had to get back on their way, so we wished them luck and got back on ours.  
  
Tuesday, we'd run into the leader of the bandit gang. Apparently he hadn't learned his lesson yet. I was going to remedy matters, but he said if I let him go, he'd tell me where the gang had stored a huge cache of rubies. I, however, do not make deals with bandits; I got him to tell me where the rubies were, and then I clobbered him anyway.  
  
Wednesday we followed his directions up a muddy mountain path to where the rubies were hidden under a rock.  
  
Thursday we found our way into a city and tried to sell the rubies. That's when we found out that the jackass bandit chief had swindled us; the stones weren't rubies at all... just spinels. Almost worthless!  
  
Friday morning we set out to find the bandit leader and kick his butt for him. Again. That was the day it starsted turning from just 'raining' to 'dark and stormy' proper; the wind came up and the temperature dropped, and by the time we got back to town we were both soaked, freezing, and annoyed. Or *I* was annoyed, anyway... I don't think anything ever annoys Gloria.  
  
Annoyed or not, both of us were pretty glad to be indoors and dry again, and finding a good restaurant had gone a *long* way towards making me feel better.  
  
"Here we are miss, young man," said the waiter, setting a great big platter down on the table. Deliscious smells were rising off of it in almost visible waves. "As requested. Three helpings... each... of pan-fried prawns in black bean sauce, with a side of mushroom fried rice and hot and sour soup."  
  
"Thanks!" I grabbed my chopsticks.  
  
"Looks tasty!" Gloria already had hers ready, and we dug in.  
  
"You got a problem, Mister?" I asked a few prawns later, when I noticed the waiter staring at us.  
  
"Er... no... not at all, young man," he replied, sweating nervously as he edged away. "I'm pleased to see you're enjoying it," he added, "now if you'll excuse me, I believe somebody wants me in the kitchen."  
  
I hadn't noticed anybody calling... but he took off pretty fast, so I guess he must've heard*something*.  
  
"Hey, Gloria!" I exclaimed, as she took advantage of my distraction. "That's *my* plate of prawns! Eat your own!"  
  
"Where's your sense of chivalry?" she asked, chewing. "Ladies first."  
  
"To hell with chivalry, I'm the one who's still got growing to do, remember?" I grabbed the plate and started eating prawns as fast as I could before she could take it back. "Growing boys need lots to eat!" I told her around a mouthful.  
  
"Growing boys need to be polite to grownup ladies!" she informed me, shovelling fried rice into her mouth.  
  
"Well, point out a lady to me and I'll be polite to her... I sure don't see one here!" I scraped the last of the bean sauce off the plate and was reaching for one of the bowls of soup with one hand while wiping my mouth with the other when I felt a hand come down on my shoulder. "Yipe!" I exclaimed in surprise, spilling the soup all down the front of my shirt.  
  
"Excuse me, kid," said the guy who'd touched me.  
  
"My soup!" I stood up and turned around to look him in the eye... or to try to, anyway. I sure hate being short. "Don't you know it's not polite to interrupt people when they're eating?" I demanded.  
  
"Didn't interrupt *me*," said Gloria, munching away on her prawns.  
  
"What're your names?" asked the man. Him and the two friends he had with him were all dressed in the dark red uniforms of the local watch. The one who'd asked was big and fat, with his hair dyed green and all shaved off except for right on top of the head. It made him look like an enormous beet.  
  
"*I* happen to be the handsome and charming sorcerer Rian Inverse," I informed him. "Who are you?"  
  
"Rian Inverse, huh?" The guy turned to his friends. "Is that right?"  
  
One of the others squinted at a piece of paper he was holding. "Close enough," he said.  
  
The Beet nodded and took out a pair of handcuffs. "You're under arrest," he announced.  
  
"Excuse me?" I asked.  
  
"I *told* you the tax collectors would notice it was missing," said Gloria, still eating.  
  
"Gimme that," I said, snatching the paper from the watchman's hands and straightened it out to look at it. It turned out to be a wanted poster, offering several thousand gold pieces for the capture of the individual depicted. The drawing was of a person with red eyes and springy red hair, and two small moles high up their forehead... but it was most definitely *not* me.  
  
I showed the poster to the Beet. "This," I told him, "is a picture of a *girl*."  
  
One of his friends sniggered. "You sure?" he asked. "You sure look like a skinny little girl to *me*."  
  
I blinked. "*What* did you just say?" I asked, clenching my fists.  
  
"You don't wanna say stuff like that to Rian," Gloria said. She got up and stood beside me. "He'll probably hurt you."  
  
The Beet looked up at her and the blood drained from his face. One thing about having Gloria around; nothing intimidates people like a six foot four inch blonde with a great big sword and a plate mail bikini. "Er... and you are, Miss?" he asked.  
  
"Gloria Gabriev," she told him. "I'm Rian's guardian."  
  
One of the Beet's friends nodded. "Inverse and Gabriev. These're them, all right."  
  
The Beet reached for my arm. "Mr. Inverse and Miss Gabriev," he told us, "you are under arrest for the murder of Rezo the Red Priest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say now can be used against you in..."  
  
"Hold it!" I stepped back. "Look, pal, I already told you; this is not my picture! You aren't looking for me! Do I need to use smaller words?"  
  
"If you're innocent, then you have nothing to worry about," the Beet promised. "You and Miss Gabriev just come with us now, and we will sort this out with the person who sent us. Please cooperate."  
  
"Who sent you?" I wanted to know.  
  
"Er... well..." the Beet shrugged and stepped aside. Waiting behind him was a tall skinny guy in a floor-length brown robe and blue cape. He had extremely green eyes and was staring straight ahead as if in some kind of daze. It was a little disconcerting... I was tempted to glance back over my shoulder to see what he was looking at.  
  
Just what we needed... another weirdo.  
  
"Who are you?" I asked him.  
  
"I am Vrumegon," he replied in a monotone.  
  
Gloria looked at me. "Vrumegon?" she echoed. I shrugged. Vrumegon... that sounded like a Russian card game. Or maybe like something you'd find in the back of your mom's spice cabinet.  
  
"You sent these guys to arrest us?" I asked Vrumegon.  
  
"I did," he replied. He didn't nod. He didn't even blink. What was he, some kind of zombie?  
  
"Well, listen," I said. "You've got the wrong people." I pushed the poster at him. "This isn't me. I know who you're after... I don't know where they are, but they aren't us."  
  
Vrumegon held up a hand, but didn't raise his voice. "Be silent," he said. "You and your companion must come with me to Sairaag."  
  
"What's in Sairaag?" I asked.  
  
"My employer," Vrumegon said. "She is waiting for you."  
  
"No, she *isn't*," I told him again. "She's waiting for somebody *else*. We last saw them on their way to Saillune. That was about three weeks ago... y'know, if you hurry, maybe they'll still be there when you catch up."  
  
"Enough," said Vrumegon. He looked at the Beet. "Bring them."  
  
The Beet and his friends started towards Gloria and me. I thought fast... fighting these guys outside would be no sweat, but if I used a spell in here I'd probably wreck the restaurant, and paying for damages was definitely on a list of things I did *not* want to do today. Right up there with 'getting arrested.'  
  
"Well, Gloria," I said, "looks like there's only one thing to do." Vrumegon was standing directly between us and the front entrance... but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.  
  
She looked at me, puzzled. "What's that?"  
  
I blew a lock of hair out of my eyes. "Run for it," I told her. She nodded, and we both made for the door as fast as we could. It was kinda gratifying to for the first time get some sort of visible response out of Vrumegon; his eyes got wide when he saw us coming, but before he had time to do anything about it we'd knocked him over and were on our way out.  
  
"After them!" I heard the Beet holler.  
  
I paused partway down the street. The Beet and his buddies came stumbling out of the resteraunt, with a rather dazed-looking Vrumegon right behind them.  
  
"There they are," one of them pointed at Gloria and I. They left the resteraunt behind and started towards us.  
  
*That* was a bit more like it! "MEGA BRANDO!" I shouted, pointing at the ground under their feet. Half the street went up in smoke, throwing Beetmen and Vrumegon into the air. They came down one after the other, landing in trees and on rooftops. The Beet himself landed on the edge of somebody's chimney, slipped, and fell in backwards... the kids in that house must've sure been surprised by Santa's new look. Vrumegon hit the roof over a well, which broke under his weight. A few seconds later, there was a faint splash.  
  
"Mm-hm," I nodded, brushing my hands off on the seat of my pants. "C'mon, Gloria... let's go finish our dinner." 


	3. 2: The Sorcerer who Wouldn't Die

Next morning was sunny. Drippy and freezing cold, but sunny. I'd've sure felt a lot happier about it if Vrumegon and the bandaged beets hadn't met us outside the inn in the morning.  
  
"Is English not you peoples' first language?" I asked.  
  
"My orders," the man in blue replied in his unnerving monotone, "were to take you and your companion to Sairaag. And I will do so by any means necessary."  
  
I groaned. "What village are you from?" I wanted to know. "I'll bet you they sure miss their idiot."  
  
The Beet limped forward. "Resisting arrest is against the law, you little upstart!" he proclaimed.  
  
"Whatcha gonna do about it, fat guy?" I shot back. "Put us in jail?"  
  
Apparently, he didn't see the inherent contradiction in this. "You bet I will!" he ranted, a slightly psychotic light appearing in his eyes. "I'll see the two of you behind bars if it's the last thing I do!"  
  
Oh, goody goody. One of *those*.  
  
  
"Don't just stand there, men!" the Beet shouted, his voice hitting a note usually reserved for calling dogs. "Get *them*!"  
  
"Levitation!" I rose out of their reach and landed on the roof of the inn. Gloria quickly drew the Sword of Light and brought it down with a 'woosh!' a fraction of an inch from the Beet's enormous stomach. He stopped cold and looked down, visibly sweating as one by one the buttons fell off his uniform; Gloria had cut all the threads holding them on.  
  
"Hey, Rian!" she shouted. "Don't just fly away and leave me down here with these guys!"  
  
"Why not?" I asked. "You're a big girl. You can look after yourself. Watch out for Smirnoff!" I added.  
  
"Watch out for... what?" Gloria followed my gaze to where the sorcerer in blue was preparing a freeze arrow. She quickly deflected the spell on her sword; it ricocheted into the side of the house whose chimney the Beet had fallen down the previous evening. Immediately a foot of snow materialized on the roof, icicles grew from the eves, and frost swirled across the windows... I'd've hated to the person who had to tell the kids living there, again, that christmas hadn't come early.  
  
"Smirnoff?" Gloria asked.  
  
"My name," the sorcerer in blue said, although he *still* didn't sound angry, "is Vrumegon."  
  
"Sorry!" I told him. "I remembered it sounded like a vodka!"  
  
The beets had gotten a ladder from somewhere and were starting to climb up onto the roof. I somersaulted over their heads and landed on the ground at the ladder's foot. No wonder all these abysmally stupid bandits manage to survive... the local lawmen are apparently even dumber.  
  
"Timber!" I gave the ladder a push. It toppled over, dumping the Beet and both of his friends into a pond full of ducks. "Maybe that'll cool you guys off!" I suggested...  
  
...and turned around to find Vrumegon right behind me with an icicle lance at the ready. I started to prepare a spell of my own, but then a streak of light flashed through him at about chest-height. His body gave off a weird glow for a moment, then faded away into nothingness.  
  
Behind him, Gloria was sheathing her sword.  
  
"Thanks for the help," I said.  
  
She smiled. "No problem!"  
  
With that taken care of, we got back on the road. We weren't really going anywhere in particular... but there's a lot of world out there and if you're going to see all of it in one lifetime, you can't spend too much time in one place. Maybe the next town would have somebody gullible we could sell those spinels to.  
  
The road took us out of the river valley where the town was situated and up towards a pass between mountain peaks. Rumor in the town had it that the two mountains were home to rival bandit gangs that would attack anybody who came by.  
  
It was definitely looking to be a good day.  
  
At least, it did until about two miles up the path. That's when we found Vrumegon standing in our way again.  
  
"Didn't I kill you?" Gloria asked him, scratching her head.  
  
"You cannot kill me," said Vrumegon in reply, as if getting killed was just sort of a minor nuisance he could afford to ignore. "I will continue to persue you, no matter what, until I have brought you to Sairaag."  
  
"Great." I covered my face with both hands. "Just great. It's the sorcerer who wouldn't die. Stand back, Gloria," I added. "This time it's my turn." I rubbed my hands together.  
  
"You cannot kill me," Vrumegon repeated.  
  
"Watch me," I said. "Flare arrow!"  
  
"Freeze arrow!" he countered. The two spells met in mid air, and both of them vanished in a shower of steam.  
  
O-kay. Time to try something bigger, maybe? "Flare lance!"  
  
"Icicle lance!"  
  
The ground underneath where the spells met began looking damp, and nearby plants wilted a little as they got doused in steam. Gloria fanned herself with one hand.  
  
This guy was *really* starting to piss me off. "Burst Flare!" I tried.  
  
"Vice freeze!"  
  
I was ready to scream. This wasn't how you're supposed to conduct a magic battle! You're supposed to try and *hurt* the other guy, not neutralize every single thing he throws at you with it's exact opposite spell! For as long as he kept that up, neither of us could touch the other. "All right!" I hollered. "That does it! That really, really does it! Gaav Flare!"  
  
He wasn't expecting *that*.  
  
The spell ripped right through him and continued on it's way, tearing up trees and finally blasting a big hole in the side of the mountain when it ran up against a cliff. And *that*, as far as anybody could tell, was the very, very last of Vrumegon.  
  
"We cannot kill you, eh?" I asked rhetorically, then turned around and started back down the path towards town.  
  
"Rian!" Gloria called after me. "Hey... Rian! Weren't we going *that* way?" she pointed.  
  
"Yeah," I said, "but now we're going *this* way. On the off chance he comes back again," not likely, but it's hard to say what a guy might do when you've killed him twice already today and it isn't even noon yet, "he'll think we went that way. So if we go the other way, maybe we can be spared the trouble of killing him again."  
  
We met one of the bandit gangs on our way down the mountain, and deprived them of several hundred silver pieces and a short sword with red stones in the hilt... at the moment I wasn't taking *anybody*'s word that glittery red rocks were necessarily rubies. But even that didn't go far towards salvaging my mood.  
  
It was nearing lunchtime when we got back into the town. As long as we were there, there didn't seem to be any good reason why we shouldn't take advantage of that excellent restaurant we'd eaten at last night. When we got there, though, we found an unpleasant surprise waiting for us.  
  
"I don't believe it," I said, pressing my face up against the restaurant window and staring. "I do not believe it! This is not happening! If I say it enough, it'll come true!"  
  
"What is it, Rian?" Gloria bent down a little to see for herself.  
  
Vrumegon was sitting at one of the tables. He wasn't eating or drinking anything... he was just *sitting* there... very obviously waiting for somebody.  
  
"We killed him, though," said Gloria. She thought for a moment and added, "twice."  
  
"This is *stupid*!" I said. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!"  
  
"So what do we do now?" she wanted to know. "Go in there and kill him again?"  
  
"I think *that* would be a waste of time," I replied sourly. "Besides," I added, straightening up as I got an idea. "I have a much better plan."  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"We're going to Saillune," I replied. The Kingdom of Saillune was, if I remembered correctly, Southeast of where we were at the moment. Of the two roads that led out of town, one went West and one went South. The West one led into the mountains... the South one off across the plains. "This way," I said, heading South.  
  
She followed me. "Why are we going to Saillune?" she asked.  
  
"Well, who is that Vrumegon guy looking for?" I wanted to know. "He's looking for our duplicates, right? We last saw them on their way to Saillune, so that's where we're going."  
  
"I thought you said you didn't ever want to see them again," Gloria protested.  
  
"I don't, particularly," I told her. "But in case you've already forgotten, they're wanted for the murder of Rezo the Red Priest. You saw the wanted poster last night. Whoever Vrumegon's working for will pay ten thousand gold pieces for them."  
  
"But Rian," Gloria pointed out, "*we* killed Rezo... didn't we?"  
  
"That isn't the *point*," I groaned. "The point is that they're not looking for us. They're looking for the clones. So if we find them and take them to Sairaag to turn them in, we get a twofer: not only will the indestructible Vrumegon quit bothering us, we'll also get the reward money! See?" I asked. "I am a genius."  
  
Gloria didn't look so sure. "What if we run into Vrumegon again on the way?" she wanted to know.  
  
"How's he gonna know where we're headed?" I asked. "He's in there waiting for us in the restaurant! He's gonna be waiting a long time!" I added cheerfully.  
  
In retrospect, the phrase that comes to mind here is: 'famous last words.' 


	4. 3: Vrumegon Strikes Again

"So," I said, inspecting the small crater my Dare Brando had left. There were a few scraps of dark blue cloth littered around the edge of it, but otherwise no remains of Vrumegon. "What was that... the fifth one?"  
  
"I haven't been counting," Gloria replied.  
  
"Me, either," I admitted. I held up a hand to shade my eyes from the afternoon sun and squinted down the road. "There's a town up ahead there... maybe we can get some lunch."  
  
"Sounds like a plan," Gloria agreed.  
  
We started down the hill. Calling the place a 'town' was a bit of an overstatement... it looked like one of those teensy little places where everybody knows everything about everybody else and if someone's cat is up a tree, the whole town gathers around to watch them get it down. It did, however, have a town hall and what looked like a small bed and breakfast, so if we were lucky, we'd be able to get something to eat. And after two days on the road, followed by a pain-in-the-ass sorcerer who refuses to be killed, I was pretty sure our luck could *only* get better.  
  
As it turned out, I was wrong... but I'll get to that.  
  
Besides being darned annoying, Vrumegon was starting to worry me. How did he keep coming back? I could believe that someone would be able to vanish fast enough to avoid a spell, thus making it *look* like they'd been killed... but he wasn't doing that. He'd taken things like a Gaav Flare or a sword through the guts that no human being should have survived.  
  
Of course, there are plenty of human-*looking* things that can come back from the dead... but all the ones I knew about needed to have something dead to come back from. If you're going to kill a vampire, for example, the only way to be sure it won't be back tomorrow night is to completely destroy the thing, either with a spell or by burning it and scattering the ashes. If you leave *anything* intact, it'll regenerate the rest... but if there's nothing left to rise again, then there's nothing left to rise again.  
  
Vrumegon hadn't once left any sort of a body. If he were a vampire or a zombie or anything like that he'd have been good and dead five or six times over by now. So no matter how appropriate the term might seem, he wasn't undead. Nor could he be any sort of mazoku; if he were, the Sword of Light should have been the end of him. So what did that leave?  
  
The answer was 'nothing I'd ever heard of.' Unless there were about fifty of him wandering around or something. That was a somewhat cheering thought... it meant if we kept killing him, we would eventually run out of Vrumegons.  
  
"Wow," said Gloria. "What's happening here?"  
  
I dragged myself out of my thoughts and looked around. We were entering the town on the main road. Right ahead of us was the town hall, and gathered around outside it was what looked like the entire population of this place.  
  
"How should I know?" I asked. Maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea to stop here. People who are standing around outside a building holding pitchforks and murmuring, "rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb," aren't likely to be very welcoming.  
  
On the other hand, people who do such things probably have a werewolf or an ogre or some other problem that they'd be willing to pay a handsome and charming sorcery genius to do something about.  
  
"Excuse me!" I said loudly. "What seems to be the problem?" I looked around for somebody specific to direct the question to. An old man with a great big shaggy dog was standing a bit apart from the rest of the crowd. "Hey, Mister," I said, walking towards him. "What's going on around here?"  
  
"Hmm?" he looked up, startled... or, rather, he raised his head. I don't think he was looking at anything. His eyes appeared unfocussed, as if he were staring off into space somewhere... he was probably blind. "Oh, dear... please don't sneak up on me, young man. You gave me quite a start, there."  
  
"Uh... sorry," I said.  
  
"Quite all right, quite all right," he replied. "Now... what was it you wanted to know?"  
  
I started to point at the mob, but realized that it wouldn't do any good. "What's everybody so upset about?" I asked.  
  
"Oh, well, that's a long story," said the blind man.  
  
"How long?" I wasn't interested enough to sit through a two-hour story.  
  
"Well," he said, "about two weeks ago, a young lady came to town looking for a place to stay. Said she'd work for her keep. Mrs. Andrews, who runs the grocery on main street, took her in. I met the girl a couple of times... Mrs. Andrews had her minding the store. Sweetest, most trustworthy little dear I ever met."  
  
"Good for her," I said sarcastically. That didn't answer my question. "What's that got to do with everybody standing outside the town hall?"  
  
"Well, you see," the blind man went on, "just a couple of days ago, the mayor's little daughter was playing in a field outside of town and she fell down an old dry well. When they found her she was down there crying her poor little eyes dry, and nobody knew how they were going to get her out again. But this girl from the grocery, she knew a couple of magic spells, and she floated down to the bottom of the well and floated right back up again with the mayor's daughter in her arms. The child had a broken leg, too, but the girl from the grocery knew a spell that healed it up as good as new."  
  
"And everybody's angry about *that*?" I asked.  
  
"Oh, no, of course not!" said the blind man. "Have some *patience*, my boy... I'm getting there." He shook his head. "Kids these days have no *patience*!"  
  
I managed not to reply that it was because geezers like him beat around the bush instead of just getting to the point, but it was an effort. "So then what happened?"  
  
"Well, this young lady was our town hero," the blind man told me. "The mayor even offered to give her a big reward for what she did, but she said that she couldn't take it. Said saving a life was it's own reward... her exact words! Brings a tear to my eye to think about it!"  
  
Whoever this chick was, I hated her already. "Go on."  
  
He nodded. "So after all that," he said, "just this morning this man comes into town with a posse and has the poor thing arrested! Locked her up, saying she murdered a priest! Imagine!" the blind man shook his head. "The little lady who saved the mayor's daughter's life... well, she could *never* have done something like that! We want her let out, but the fool won't listen!"  
  
"Murdered a priest?" I asked. "Did this guy wear a blue robe and have a red crystal in his..." I stopped, remembering who I was talking to. "I mean, did he talk in a monotone and have a name that sounds like some kind of obscure musical instrument?"  
  
"Yup," the blind man said cheerfully. "That's him!"  
  
If I'd had the time, there were a lot of things I'd've wondered about. I would have wanted to find out how Vrumegon had gotten here before us when it hadn't been half an hour since the last time we killed him. I also would have liked to know who this 'sweet little lady' was. If Vrumegon had arrested her, then she must look like me... but it couldn't be Lina. No clone of mine would drag some brat out of a well and then refuse to accept money for it.  
  
I didn't get time to think about any of this, though... because right then somebody grabbed me by the collar and hollered, "we *told* you! You've got the wrong person! *Here's* the kid you want!"  
  
"Hey!" I exclaimed. "Let go!"  
  
"Put him down!" Gloria ordered, drawing her sword. Ordinarily, when Gloria says something people tend to listen to her out of sheer intimidation... but angry mobs are hard to intimidate. More people rushed in to get a hold of my arms and legs and dragged me up to the front of the crowd. There in front of the town hall was a wooden cart with barred windows and, sure enough, Vrumegon.  
  
"Here!" said one of the men holding on to me. They let go of me, dumping me on the road in front of Vrumegon. "You see! Now let her go!"  
  
Gloria dashed in between me and Vrumegon and held up her sword. "If you want to hurt Rian," she said, "you'll have to get by me first."  
  
Vrumegon looked at me, then at Gloria. "You two again," he said.  
  
"We told you!" somebody else shouted. "Take this kid and let the girl go!"  
  
"Oh, no, you don't!" I hollered, scrambling to my feet.  
  
"I cannot release the girl," Vrumegon said to the crowd. "I have found three people who match the description my employer gave me. I intend to apprehend all of them. If the girl is innocent, she will eventually be released unharmed."  
  
"Fireball," I said.  
  
The secret to dealing with Vrumegons is to catch them off-guard.  
  
"Well, that was easy," I announced to nobody in particular.  
  
The crowd stared at the smoking patch on the road and then looked at each other, wondering what to do next... apparently, they hadn't been expecting the scene to end quite like that.  
  
"Oh, you didn't *kill* him, did you?" asked a voice from inside the cart. "Please tell me you didn't... violence isn't an answer!"  
  
The bottom dropped right out of my stomach. Oh, *no*... not *him*. It couldn't be... the townspeople had been saying it was a girl... but I wouldn't have put it past *him* to be mistaken for one. God, if you love me, *tell* me it's not *him*!  
  
"Well, don't just stand there," a member of the mob said. "Let her out!"  
  
Two or three people ran up to the cart and forced the door open. They had to help it's tearful occupant climb out, and she promptly latched onto one of her rescuers and burst into loud, messy sobs. "I was so *scared*!" she wailed.  
  
Gloria scratched her head. "Isn't that your clone from before, Rian?" she asked.  
  
"I don't think so," I said weakly. I honestly don't know why I didn't just turn around and run like hell. Maybe I was too much in shock to move. It wasn't who I'd been afraid it would be... it was way worse.  
  
They were *multiplying*. 


	5. 4: Three's A Crowd

Author's Note: Hi de ho, readers. Although this has absolutely nothing to do with fanfiction whatsoever, I would like the world to know that Great Big Sea doth rock my world, and their new album is just awesome. *sings* "Oh, she can punch ahead in any gale, and ride the fishing ground! I often thought how proud I'd be in a boat like Gideon Brown!"  
  
*looks around at all the people wondering if she's out of her mind* Um... yeah.  
  
Okay, now to give this Note some reason for it's existance, I have this little random blather about voices. Logic would dictate that Lina, Rian, and Shadow-Lina all ought to have pretty much indistinguishable voices, but when I 'hear' them in my head, all three sound quite distinct. Lina's voice is, of course, Lisa Ortiz... I don't care what the purists say, Lisa *is* Lina Inverse. Shadow Lina, on the other hand, is Cynthia Martinez, whom I can't stand as Lina but her voice works for Shadow. And Rian's voice, for some weird reason known only to my subconscious, is Micheal J. Fox... although a friend once told me that she 'hears' him as Steve Metz (Kane Blueriver). Gee, I wonder why.  
  
---  
  
"There, there," one of the men said to the girl, stroking her hair. "Everything's going to be all right now... see, your brother over there rescued you."  
  
"Hey, I'm not her brother!" I protested.  
  
The girl looked over at me. She was short and skinny, with no tits at *all* and long red hair tied up in a ponytail with a big pink checkered ribbon. The dress she was wearing was also pink gingham, with a frilly white pinafore apron that had little *butterflies* embroidered on the front. It was enough to make a guy feel sick.  
  
She furrowed her brow, puzzled. "Miss Lina?" she asked me.  
  
"NO!" I hollered, not so much an answer to her question as a denial of this situation in general. A girl clone of me... that was embarrassing enough. Knowing that somewhere out there I had another clone who was a complete pansy wasn't much better. Having one that was *both* was just too much. "No, no, no, no, no!" I covered my eyes. "This is a dream. That's it! This is just a bad dream! I'm gonna count to three, and then I'll wake up and this will be all over! One, two, three!"  
  
I looked up again... and yelped. She was right in my *face*!  
  
"Thank you so much!" the girl exclaimed, throwing her arms around me. "I thought that man was going to take me away!"  
  
"Let go!" I wailed.  
  
"Thank you, thank you!" she squeezed me.  
  
"Help! I can't breathe!"  
  
"I don't know what I would have done! I'm so grateful!"  
  
"GET THIS PSYCHOTIC CHICK AWAY FROM ME!" I worked one arm free and peeled her off... she had a grip like a leech... and she landed on her bottom on the road. Her eye promptly filled with tears. "Oh, no," I moaned. "Now you're gonna cry again, aren't you?"  
  
"Hey," one of the townspeople said sharply. "Is that how you always treat girls, kid?"  
  
"If my son acted like that, I'd take him over my knee," someone else sniffed.  
  
Voices rose in agreement throughout the crowd. I looked up at Gloria for help.  
  
"That wasn't a very chivalrous thing to do," she told me. "I think you should apologize."  
  
The girl was still sitting there, with tears spilling silently down her cheeks... and fifty people plus the woman who's supposed to be my loyal sidekick were about to lynch me. This *had* to be a nightmare... if this was reality, then I might as well just go find a nice big cliff to jump off of. I couldn't *handle* this!  
  
I grabbed the girl's arm and pulled her to her feet again. "I'm sorry," I told her, backing up a few steps in case she tried to hug me again. "I'm sorry I pushed."  
  
"Really?" she sniffled. "You are?"  
  
"Really," I crossed my fingers behind my back.  
  
"Okay!" She stopped crying and smiled sunnily. "I forgive you, then!"  
  
I forced myself to return the smile. "Well, come on, Gloria," I announced. "Let's get going before Vrumegon comes back!"  
  
"Comes back?" somebody said. "What are you talking about? You blew him to bits!"  
  
"He *always* comes back," I told them darkly.  
  
That's when it hit me; duplicates. Somebody with a Shadow Reflector or a Copy Machine and way too much time on his or her hands had made about six million Vrumegons and sent them looking for me! As long as that person still had the original to copy from, Gloria and I would be on the recieving end of a bottomless barrel of expendable Vrumegons.  
  
As *if* today could get any worse!  
  
"Is something wrong, Rian?" Gloria wanted to know.  
  
I sighed. "Let's just go," I said.  
  
"Weren't we going to get something to eat?" asked Gloria.  
  
"Oh!" the girl in pink said, "are you hungry? You don't have to leave so fast! If you want dinner, all you have to do is ask! It wouldn't be right for us to turn you away without something to eat."  
  
"No, we're fine," I told her. She didn't seem to be aware that the whole darn town was still standing there watching us, but *I* was, and it was making me feel like an idiot. "We'll just be on our way, now."  
  
"You don't need to worry," she said, "you won't be imposing or anything. I'll make you something myself! I can cook!"  
  
"I already said no thank you!" I protested, backing away. "We've got a long way to go!"  
  
Gloria looked down at me, concerned. "Rian, are you feeling all right?" she asked. "You just turned down free food."  
  
"I'm *fine*!" I snapped. "We're leaving now!"  
  
"But I'm still hungry," said Gloria. "Can't we stay and eat?"  
  
"Sure you can!" the girl in pink grabbed our hands and started tugging us down the street. "Come on! I'll make you something! This way!"  
  
Well, she *could* cook... and she wasn't too bad at it. Mrs. Andrews said she could use any supplies from the grocery that she needed, so she fried up bacon and eggs and pancakes for us. Gloria sat and stuffed herself, but I can't say I felt like doing the same. The girl in pink was obviously having a great time; she was humming and waltzing around the kitchen with her pots and pans. It had to be one of the cutest, most domestic things I'd ever seen and it was making me feel like I was going to throw up. And this was a version of me! That was *my* genetic material that had been corrupted to make that thing!  
  
"Anybody want sixths?" the girl asked cheerfully.  
  
Gloria started to hold out her plate for more, but I snatched it and stood up. "No, thanks," I said. "We... uh... we shouldn't overstay our welcome! Got places to go, things to see... reward money to collect... lots to do. Come on, Gloria." I dragged my sidekick out of her chair and made for freedom.  
  
"Okay!" The girl in pink put her frying pan down and turned off the stove. "I'll just go get my cloak!"  
  
My boots left skid marks halfway down Mrs. Andrews' front hall. No! Absolutely not! I'd die first!  
  
The girl ran past me and pulled a hooded cape out of the closet. "I'm ready!"  
  
"You're not coming!" I protested.  
  
"But what if that bad man comes back and tries to take me away again?" the girl wanted to know. "I can't stay here all by my lonesome with no-one to protect me!"  
  
"Well... you're a sorceress, aren't you?" I asked. "Blow him up!"  
  
"I couldn't do that!" she protested.  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Because it's *mean*!"  
  
I pushed my hands up into my hair and tried to resist a powerful urge to start tearing it out by the roots. "Just shut up!" I moaned. "Shut up and leave me alone! We're going now... have a nice life, and don't follow us!"  
  
The girl started at me a moment in shock, then her eyes began to mist up again. Oh, crap...  
  
"You're mean!" she wailed, tears trickling down her cheeks. "I don't want to go to jail! I never hurt anybody and I don't want to be locked up in some dark old cell with rats and spiders and icky things!"  
  
"That's not my problem!" I told her. "Gloria, we're leaving."  
  
Gloria, however, didn't budge. "Look what you did," she said. "You made her cry again!"  
  
There was a sound of footsteps from the second story of the house, and Mrs. Andrews came hurrying down the stairs. "Oh, pet!" she exclaimed, running to hug the girl in pink. "What's the matter!"  
  
"He's leaving!" the girl sobbed. "They're going to leave without me! I can't stay here with that bad man wanting to arrest me! And he might be back any minute!"  
  
"We can't take her with us!" I said. "We've got stuff to do!"  
  
Mrs. Andrews raised her head to fix me with an 'angry mother' look. "You're a very ill-mannered young man," she said. "Hasn't anybody ever told you that you're supposed to be polite to girls?"  
  
"*I* tell him that all the time," said Gloria.  
  
I sighed... it looked like I wasn't going to get out of here without apologizing. "I'm sorry," I said. Maybe I should try a different approach. "Look," I said to the girl. "You don't want to come with us anyway. It's a long way, and it's going to be scary and dangerous." That ought to do the trick.  
  
"Oh..." the girl stuck the end of one finger in her mouth. "But..."  
  
"Hey, Rian," said Gloria. "If we leave her here, won't that Cummerbund guy come and catch her?"  
  
I raised an eyebrow... it had taken her that long to figure out what this conversation was about? "Haven't we just been talking about that?" I asked.  
  
"Well," Gloria said, "if he does, won't he think his job is done?"  
  
For a moment, I couldn't figure out what she was talking about... but then it got through; if this girl looked exactly like Lina, then when we turned the *real* one over to these guys, we weren't going to get any money for our trouble! If we took her with us, I'd go raving insane within a week... but if we left her here, we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot! All that time and trouble, wasted!  
  
I groaned. "Well, come on," I said reluctantly. "We don't have all day."  
  
"You mean I can come?" the girl asked, with stars in her eyes. "You're not going to leave me?"  
  
What had I done to make the gods hate me this much? "Yes," I said. "You can come... but DON'T HUG ME!" I added, as she made to do so. "Got that? Rule number one... I don't hug!"  
  
"Oh," she said, disappointed. "Okay... bye, Mrs. Andrews... thank you for letting me work for you!"  
  
"It was my pleasure, darling," the woman replied. "Now, you be sure to wrap up warm, and do come back and visit me someday!"  
  
"I will!" the girl promised.  
  
So we got back on our way to Saillune... with Screwed Up Me Clone #3 as our new fellow-traveller.  
  
"By the way," she told me, skipping along next to me as we headed out of town. "I'm Shadow-Lina."  
  
"I know," I said.   
  
"And you?" she asked.  
  
"Rian. Rian Inverse." I wasn't feeling particularly handsome or charming right about then... more like humiliated and annoyed.  
  
"Very nice to meet you, Mr. Rian!" she replied. "Are you a reflection of Miss Lina, too?"  
  
"Something like that," I agreed.  
  
It was going to be a long trip to Saillune. 


	6. 5: Unfinished Business

Here's a little piece of free advice for you all: don't *ever* say that things are so bad they can't get worse. In fact, don't even *think* it. Because it is never true. No matter how bad things are, they can always, always get worse... and if you ever convince yourself that they can't, then whatever Powers will immediately conspire to prove you wrong.  
  
Just when I'd thought *my* day couldn't possibly suck any more than it did already, that damn shadow started to *sing*.  
  
"White coral bells," she sang happily, "upon a slender stalk! Lillies of the valley deck my garden walk!" There were a lot of wildflowers in the hills we were walking through, and she'd picked a bunch of the ones in question and was now weaving them into a wreath for her hair. "Oh, don't you wish that you could hear them ring?" she sang on. "That can only happen when the fairies sing!"  
  
She wove one final stem into the wreath, then shook it to make sure it was solidly together and put it on her head. I noticed as she did that she was left-handed... like me. That made sense. A shadow-copy was a mirror-image of the original; Lina had been right-handed, and so had the wussy copy I'd gotten out of the original Reflector. So if this one were a shadow of a shadow, she'd be back to being left-handed again. That was weirdly reassuring, somehow. Something about this shadow was nagging at me, but I couldn't seem to put my finger on exactly what it was.  
  
What had happened to that other duplicate, I wondered. Vrumegon mentioned three people who fit the description he'd been given. Obviously, the first was me and the second was this girl, so who was the third? Was it Lina, or my other shadow? More likely Lina, since it was her picture on the poster. Where was the last duplicate, then?  
  
If I were lucky, maybe he'd stay there. I wasn't in any kind of mood to have *him* following me around, too.  
  
"Finished?" I asked, as the shadow reached the end of her song.  
  
"Uh-huh!" She nodded, then took a deep breath and started over. "White coral bells!"  
  
Somebody shoot me.  
  
All things considered, I definitely needed to work off some stress... and for once, the world decided to be nice and provided a handy means of doing so; shortly before sunset, we were attacked by bandits.  
  
Well, by *a* bandit. And he only *started* to attack us. He jumped out of the bushes, cutlass at the ready, and ordered, "all right, girls, give me all your..." the cutlass hit the road with a clang. "Oshit."  
  
The shadow screamed and darted behind me to hide, while Gloria reached up and scratched her head. "Do we know him?" she asked me.  
  
The bandit was standing there, his eyes huge, frozen with terror. I rolled my eyes. "Gee, Gloria, I don't know," I replied sarcastically. I stuck the end of one finger in my mouth and imitated the face she makes when she's trying to remember something. "Wait a minute!" I snapped my fingers theatrically. "I think I remember! That's the bandit leader who swindled us last week!"  
  
The bandit's face turned an amusing shade of blue. Sweat was rolling down his forehead.  
  
"Yeah, that's right!" I nodded, and held out a hand in front of me to begin casting a fireball. "The one who told us about those *rubies*!"  
  
"Oh... um... now... listen!" The bandit started backing away. "I didn't do it on purpose! I had *no* idea those weren't real rubies! I swear to god!"  
  
I paused mid-spell. How long would it take him to realize that he was an idiot?  
  
Not very long. His mouth moved as he silently repeated what he'd just said, and then he went even bluer. "Um... have a nice day! Goodbye!" he said, and took off down the road just as fast as his legs could carry him.  
  
"Let's go, Gloria!" I started to chase him... but something grabbed me and I fell flat on my face instead. When I tried to pick myself up, that horrible shadow was kneeling on the road behind me, both arms wrapped around my knees. "What the hell are you doing?" I demanded.  
  
"You were going to hurt him!" she said.  
  
"Darn right I was." I started peeling her arms off me again. I had a horrible sinking feeling about this... I could remember far too well what my other clone had been like about the idea of hurting anybody, but *surely* that ridiculous attitude couldn't be extended to *bandits*. "The guy's a criminal," I told her. "He makes his living robbing and killing people and he swindled us out of a couple of thousand gold pieces when he promised rubies and all we got were *these*." I thrust the bag of spinels under her nose.  
  
"Ooooh... pretty," she said, reaching in.  
  
I snatched it back before she could take one. "Look. My *point* is that he's a bad guy. Remember the golden rule? Do unto others and all, right? So after he did all that horrible stuff to other people, we're well within our rights to do what we want with him."  
  
"But that's mean!" the shadow protested, using her favourite word again. She grabbed my shirt. "Bandits aren't bad people, they've just never had any opportunities. You should feel *sorry* for them!"  
  
"Right," I said. "I do... so I'm gonna put him out of his misery! Now let *go* of me!" I yanked my clothes out of her fingers and stood up. "Ray Wing!"  
  
"Rian! Wait up!" Gloria ran after as I flew down the road.  
  
"Stop! Stop!" The shadow wasn't far behind. "You can't!"  
  
I caught up with the bandit easily... but unfortunately, so did the shadow. She ran in between me and him and refused to move. "You mustn't hurt him!" she told me. "He just doesn't know any better, that's all! If you really want to stop him from robbing people, you need to try to *help* him!"  
  
The bandit nodded enthusiastically. "That's right," he said. He put his hands on the shadow's shoulders. "That's exactly right... what a smart litle girl! Listen to your sister, kid!"  
  
"She's *not* my sister!" I snapped.  
  
"Well, whoever she is." The bandit pulled a knife out of his boot and held it against her neck. She let out a startled 'eep!' "Do what she says," he finished darkly. "Or you're gonna be down a look-alike."  
  
I shrugged. "Please," I said. "Spare me the trouble."  
  
And that's when the shadow started crying again.  
  
"Oh, please, sir!" she begged. "You couldn't really kill me, could you? Why can't we all just live together peacefully and be nice to each other?" She turned and threw her arms around the bandit's neck in a hug. "Please... don't do it... I know that deep down you're really a nice man and you don't want to hurt anybody!"  
  
"Dear god," I said, covering my face.  
  
By and large, bandits are pretty used to being begged for mercy... but I guess it doesn't usually involve hugging. While he stood there, trying to figure out what he was stupposed to do next, Gloria calmly walked up behind him and drew her sword. The bandit's eyes popped wide open as he felt the tip of it tickle his back.  
  
"Let her go," said Gloria.  
  
The bandit dropped the knife and awkwardly patted the shadow on the head. "Um... now, now," he said nervously. "It's okay... I wasn't going to hurt you. I was just trying to scare, him, honest... um... would you like to let go of me now?"  
  
She loosened her grip and wiped her eyes. "Really and truly?" she asked.  
  
"Really and truly." The bandit glanced up at me, and I nodded... I knew *exactly* how he felt.  
  
The shadow came running up to me and tugged on the edge of my cape. "You see, Mr. Rian?" she asked excitedly. "You see? I *told* you he wasn't a bad person!"  
  
"Yup. I see," I said, and pointed at the bandit. "Digger Volt!"  
  
It was almost dark before we got back on our way, because it took forever for me to convince the shadow to stop sobbing over the charred remains of the bandit. She agreed to come only after I threatened to leave her behind... for which, naturally, Gloria made me apologize.  
  
"How *could* you?" the shadow wimpered as we set off again. "You're just like Miss Lina! She promised me she was only going to show Master Lagen the error of his ways and then she went and did all those horrible things to him!"  
  
"I know," I said. "Just be quiet, would you?" I went a few more steps... then hesitated. "Wait minute, what do you know about Lagen and all that? You weren't there."  
  
The shadow looked confused. "Yes I was," she said. "Of course I was. Master Lagen used the Shadow Reflector on Miss Lina and Miss Nagha, and that made Shadow-Nagha and me."  
  
"No," I corrected her, "you just remember it that way because that's how Lina re..."  
  
That didn't quite make sense somehow. I frowned and tried to think. This shadow would have to have been made recently... in the past few weeks. Either Lina had found a rebuilt version of the original Reflector, flaws and all, or my other copy had met Corbold the Magician and run afoul of the same mirror that created Lina and Gourry. She'd implied that she was a copy from Lina, in which case she shouldn't talk about that incident as if it had happened to her.  
  
Maybe... nah. But...  
  
"You're a copy, right?" I asked her. "A reflection?" She nodded. "Okay, so how long have you been around?" I wanted to know.  
  
"Hmm..." she said. "I think almost two years now. Why?"  
  
"Two years," I repeated. I swallowed. "Have you ever met a guy who... he would have looked more like me, but acted more like you. Have you ever met anyone like that? Or have you ever had a copy made of yourself?"  
  
She shook her head. "Is there something wrong, Mr. Rian?"  
  
"So where did you come from?" I wanted to know.  
  
"From Miss Lina," said the shadow. "She was there with Miss Nagha and Master Lagen made duplicates of them with the Shadow Reflector."  
  
Gloria looked concerned. "Are you sure you're all right, Rian?" she asked. "This is the second time today you've turned that funny colour."  
  
I swallowed. "I'm okay," I told her... but I wasn't. I wasn't okay at all. 


	7. 6: Inside, Looking Out

Author's Note: I was listening to Nickleback a lot while I wrote this... It seemed appropriate. Other songs that have found their way on the 'soundtrack' of this fic are 'AllStar' by Smashmouth, 'Sorry for Myself' by Jann Arden, 'Ordinary Day' by Great Big Sea, and 'Falling for the First Time' by the BareNaked Ladies. And I just noticed that almost all of the bands in the above list are Canadian. What can I say? Canadian music kicks butt, eh? ^_^  
  
Author's Note²: I apologize that this chapter is more angst than humour... future chapters will remedy the situation.  
  
---  
  
There weren't any towns close enough for us to make it there before it got really dark. Instead, we had to bed down in the bush.  
  
Gloria, who can sleep anywhere, naturally nodded off right away... and somehow managed to sleep through a good, solid forty-five minutes of the shadow's whining and complaining about cold and damp and snakes and rats and spiders. It took me forever to convince her that nothing was going to crawl up her skirt in the middle of the night and another forever to get it through her head that I am not a pillow. Eventually, though, she nodded off.  
  
And that just left me.  
  
I tried counting stars for a while, hoping to bore myself to sleep, but it wasn't working. I had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach... it was impossible to sleep while thinking that maybe *I* was the one who was only a...  
  
Nah, that was a stupid idea. I would have known if I was a shadow, I was certain of it.  
  
Then again, Lina had been just as certain that *she* was the real one...  
  
No, no way that could be. If *Lina* were the original, that would mean I'd only existed for a few weeks. My memories felt perfectly real way farther back than that. I could remember with complete clarity playing on the floor of my father's shop in Zephilia... in fact, my very oldest memory was of the time the mice nibbled through one of the barrels; we'd woken up in the morning to find the cellar ankel-deep in wine... with a lot of drunken mice swimming in it. That had been when I was only three years old.  
  
I *had* to be the real one. If this horrible little girly duplicate remembered things differently, then that must be just some weird by-product of how the mirrors copied memories. I *knew* I wasn't a duplicate.  
  
I curled up and shut my eyes.  
  
Even having reassured myself that I was real, I didn't feel as if I were ever going to be able to fall asleep... but I must have done so eventually, because the next thing I remembered was dreaming.  
  
I dreamed that I was wandering around in what looked like some sort of great hall or palace ballroom; an enormous room with painted cielings and tile floors, and huge windows along both walls. There were no lights on, just a reddish sunset shining in the windows, and absolutely no sign of any other living creature in the whole place. The only sound was my footsteps echoing off the far walls.  
  
I had a creepy feeling that somebody was watching me, though. I cleared my throat. "Um... hello?" I asked experimentally. "Is anybody home?"  
  
I didn't exactly get an answer, but behind me, another voice said the same thing in unison with me. I turned around to look... and there was Lina.  
  
"Oh," I said disgustedly, swatting my hair out of my eyes. "It's *you*. What do you want?"  
  
She didn't answer. Instead, she aped my movements, using her right hand to brush her bangs aside where I'd used my left, and repeating everything I'd said in the same tone. I bristled... she was making fun of me! "Cut that out," I told her, only to have her mimic me again. "I mean it! I don't like hitting girls, but for *you* I'm willing to make an exception!"  
  
Lina kept up the same thing, copying everything I did and said. I glared at her, and she glared right back without blinking.  
  
Okay... how long could she keep this up?  
  
I turned around to face away from her, counted silently to ten, and then glanced back over my shoulder. She was still there, looking back at me exactly as I was looking at her. I looked straight ahead again and clapped my hands three times. Behind me, I heard her do the same.  
  
"Yeah, you're having great fun, aren't you?" I asked, turning to look at her again. I folded my arms and tilted my head to the right a bit. She folded hers and cocked her head left. I crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue. She did the same.  
  
I frowned and thought for a moment, then closed my eyes and reached up to touch the end of my nose with my index finger. When I opened one eye to check, she was doing the exact same thing.  
  
"Cheater!" I accused. No way she could have done that without looking.  
  
"Cheater!" she echoed.  
  
"Stop it!" I shouted.  
  
"Stop it!" she shouted back.  
  
"Why, you little..." I reached to grab her arm. She brought her hand up to do the same, and our fingers met... but they didn't. I blinked and leaned forward to look closer. We seemed to be touching opposite sides of a pane of glass.  
  
A mirror.  
  
It was a mirror.  
  
I stared for a moment longer, then burst out laughing. "Good one," I said to nobody in general. "You had me worried there for a moment." I looked back at the mirror and made another face... and this time was quite pleased to see Lina copy it. "You can say whatever you want," I told her, "but you're nothing but my reflection."  
  
I smiled smugly at her. She smiled back, then held out her right hand in front of her.  
  
"Wha?" I looked at my left hand, down by my side, then back at her... she was still smiling, and a spell was forming above her outstretched palm. "Hey, wait a minute," I said. "You're not allowed to do that."  
  
She pointed at me. "Bram Gush!" she ordered.  
  
"Don't!" I reached to stop her, but ran up against the glass... which a moment later shattered into pieces.  
  
I shouted in pain and reached to cover my eyes... but my hands never made it. All around me things were cracking apart with a musical tinkling sound that seemed to rip through me like a knife. I was disintegrating... pieces of me were tumbling to the floor, trapped in the shards of the mirror.  
  
Then, thank heavens, I woke up.  
  
"Mr. Rian?" somebody asked.  
  
I looked up and yelped... there she was *still*, looking down at me! I tried to scramble away, but there was a big tree right behind me... I was trapped.  
  
"I'm so sorry!" she said anxiously, covering her mouth with both hands. "Are you okay? You looked like you were having a scary dream, so I thought I'd better wake you up... I didn't frighten you, did I?"   
  
"Huh?" I asked, staring at her in incomprehension. That didn't sound like something a clone of me would... oh, that's right. This wasn't Lina. This was just that *other* shadow... the even more embarrassing one. I breathed out... it was okay. I'd only been dreaming.  
  
"Mr. Rian?" asked the shadow.  
  
I gave her a shaky nod. "Yeah," I said. "I'm fine." I finger-combed my hair out of my eyes and found it was soaking wet, as if I'd just gotten out of the bath. My shirt was damp and cold and sticking ichily to my skin, and I could feel my pulse in my chest... good grief. Why was I all freaked out over that silly dream?  
  
"Oh, good." The shadow smiled brightly. "What were you dreaming about?"  
  
"Nothing special," I told her. It *wasn't* anything special... it *wasn't*. I *knew* I wasn't a clone...  
  
... didn't I?  
  
This was completely stupid. There had to be some way to tell for sure. Who would know which was the real McCoy... or maybe in this situation I ought to say the real Inverse?  
  
Nagha would know, but it had been over a year since I'd seen her. I wouldn't even know where to start looking. Plus she'd want to know what was going on, and the very last thing I needed right now was another annoying girl following me across the continent. Zelgadiss Greywers would know, but again, I had no idea where to look for him. Aloysius the Blue, who'd hired Gloria and I to take that reflector to Corbold the Magician, would know, but I didn't want to go all the way back to Atlas City. Was there anybody *nearby* who might be able to tell me?  
  
Yes, I realized suddenly, there was... they weren't high on a list of people I particularly wanted to take this to... but they would definitely be able to give me an answer.  
  
I don't think I slept much the rest of the night. When the sun rose, I got Gloria and the shadow up early, and we started heading North.  
  
"Hey, Rian," said Gloria. "Isn't Saillune the other way?"  
  
"Yes," I told her.  
  
Gloria glanced back over her shoulder, then looked at the road ahead of us, pursing her lips as she tried to figure this out. "We'ren't we going to Saillune?" she asked.  
  
"We were," I replied. She'd probably have shut up sooner if I'd answered the spirit of her question instead of just the letter, but I was feeling perverse.  
  
I waited for the next inquiry, but it was the shadow, not Gloria, who asked.  
  
"So where are we going instead?" she wanted to know.  
  
"Zephilia."  
  
"Zephilia?" Gloria scratched her head. "What's in Zephilia?"  
  
"Oh!" said the reflection. "That's where Miss Lina grew up, isn't it?"  
  
I winced. "Yeah," I said.  
  
"So why are we going there?" asked Gloria.  
  
"There're some people I want to ask some stuff," I told her vaguely. She seemed to be satisfied with that... which was good, because it was all I was going to say. I'd feel like a dork saying that I wanted to talk to my parents. If they *were* my parents...  
  
Okay, now I was just being stupid. Of *course* they were my parents. I was 99% sure that I could not be a duplicate of somebody else... but I had to know for sure. I didn't want to live with 99% when the 1% could give me nightmares. 


	8. 7: You Can't Go Home Again

Author's Note: to the people who have asked me why Rian doesn't remember a male Nagha and a female Zelgadiss... I haven't the faintest idea. Honest.   
  
---  
  
It wasn't a long trip from where we were to Zephilia. Only three Vrumegons.  
  
The first one I tried using an Assha Dist on, just to make absolutely certain he wasn't undead. Sure enough, he wasn't. He looked kind of confused that I'd even tried it... so I took advantage of the moment, and roasted him.  
  
When the second one appeared, I decided I was getting sick of blowing them up. Instead, I let Gloria distract him while I beat him at his own game, trapping him in ice with a Lye Briem. This wouldn't have taken nearly as long as it did if that damn shadow hadn't decided to grab his robe and start tearfully begging for mercy. I should have just let the spell get her, too.  
  
We just left number two there in the ice, so I can't say for sure whether number three was actually number three, or just Dr. Freeze back for another round. I was feeling creative, so number three I electrocuted. The shadow whined that it wasn't right to just leave him lying there on the road twitching, so I set him on fire, too, before we left. That was apparently not what she meant.  
  
"He's only doing his job!" she wailed.  
  
"His *job* is to drag us to the other end of the continent so that this mysterious employer of his can do god-knows-what to us," I told her.  
  
"But maybe if we could *talk* to this person we could sort things out," said the shadow. "Whoever it is, I'm sure they're really a good person..."  
  
I groaned. "Listen," I said. "Do you have a *name* or anything, shadow?"  
  
She frowned, puzzled. "I'm Shadow-Lina," she said. "Didn't I tell you that already?"  
  
"No, I mean a *name*," I corrected. "You can't just be 'Shadow-Lina.'"  
  
"Why not?" she asked.  
  
"Because *everybody's* got a name. I'm Rian... this is Gloria... Lina's Lina... who are you?"  
  
"Shadow-Lina," she repeated.  
  
I gave up. "Fine," I said. "Your name is Shadow. Could you please, *please* just be quiet for a *little* while? Please?"  
  
"Sorry," she said meekly.  
  
The city where I grew up was and is pretty big, and it had been four years since I was there last, but I found my way around all right. Zephilia is one of those sunny, lazy sorts of places where not much ever seems to change. My history teacher always liked to talk about what a glorious and exciting history this country has, but I could never imagine battles and great sorcerers and heros in this place. That's one of the reasons I left, actually... nothing ever *happens* here.  
  
Certainly, nothing had happened to my parents' shop. The sign over the door had been repainted, and somebody had finally replaced the pane in the front window that I broke with a slingshot when I was seven, but other than that, it looked just like how I remembered it. That was definitely reassuring.  
  
I directed Gloria and Shadow to the bench out front. "I want you two to wait for me there," I said. "I'll be right back."  
  
"But what if something happens?" Shadow asked anxiously.  
  
"Gloria will be here to save you," I told her. "You'll be just fine."  
  
She didn't look too sure. I sighed. "Gloria, just look after her, would you?"  
  
"Right," Gloria nodded and turned to pat Shadow on the shoulder. "Don't worry about Rian," she said. "He might look like a girl, but he's actually pretty tough."  
  
"Hey," I growled. She was lucky I had other things on my mind, or I'd've clobbered her for that... I *hate* being told I look like a girl!  
  
What if the reason people thing I look like one is because...  
  
No! This was stupid. This was paranoia. This was ridiculous! I looked at the sign above the door, then took a deep breath and went to get an answer once and for all.  
  
A bell hung from the door dingled as I entered... that was new. The employees were all new faces, too... but that was probably only to be expected. Other than that, the place looked the same as it always had. Shelves and shelves of bottles which always looked sort of dusty even when Mom had just been over them all with a clean rag. Displays with old glasses and stale bread and wax grapes. The tired-looking oriental rug that Dad had been given as a wedding present from somebody he didn't like... he'd put it on the floor of the shop hoping it would wear through and he could throw it out, but it had stood up extremely well. He insisted it did that just to spite him.  
  
"Can I help you with something, young man?" asked the guy at the till... he sounded polite enough but there was a bit of an edge on his voice. He was letting me know he thought I was too young to be in a shop that sold wine.  
  
"Are the owners home?" I wanted to know.  
  
He shook his head. "Not right now, but they should be back soon."  
  
"Okay." I said. "I'll wait, then." I sat down on the floor next to one of the cabinets to do so, but a few moments later I noticed that the guy was staring at me. "What?" I asked.  
  
"Sorry," he said. "It's just... gosh, you sure look like Mistress Inverse. Are you a relative?"  
  
"I'm their son," I told him.  
  
"Oh," he said. "Didn't know they had one."  
  
My heart sank a little... but then, it *had* been four years since I was home, and they'd always liked my sister better anyway. Maybe they just didn't talk about me much. And heck, this guy was just an employee... why should they tell him anything about the family?  
  
I didn't like him looking at me, though, so I got up and started occupying myself by inspecting some of the stuff on the shelves. Mostly local wines, but also some imported stuff and a few things Mom always called 'curiosities.' My favourite of the latter had always been... I wondered if they still carried it... ah, there it was. Eau de Vie de Poire. I took a bottle down to look at it. The contents were a slightly cloudy yellowish liquid, made out of pear juice. Nothing remarkable to look at, and I'd never tasted it... the thing that was so special about it was the packaging.  
  
It stuff came in a clear glass bottle which was, of course, pear-shaped... and floating inside was an actual whole pear. When I was little I used to sit for hours trying to figure out how they got the pear inside. There was no way the neck of the bottle was big enough to admit it, and when I asked Dad, he just smiled and told me it was magic.  
  
He was kidding, of course. Sorcerers have much better things to do than put pears inside bottles. What really happens is that when the pear is still on the tree, just a bud, the farmer puts the bottle over it and lets the fruit grow inside. I can remember the day the man who sold us the stuff told me that... it was one of the biggest disappointments of my life; I'd wanted it to be *real* magic.  
  
Maybe I should show it to Gloria and watch her try to figure it out. Her brain would probably start smoking from the effort. I reached to put the bottle back on the shelf.  
  
"Well, well, well," said a horrible voice. "Look who's back."  
  
I very nearly had a heart attack. The bottle dropped out of my hand and smashed on the floor, mushing the pear and creating a spreading puddle of yellowish liquor. Of *all* people who could have happened to come into the store right at that moment... gods, what *was* this? Universe Picks On Rian Inverse Week?  
  
"You cut your hair," the voice observed. "What did you go and do that for?"  
  
She was between me and the door... I couldn't get out without having to go past her! I was trapped!  
  
"Come on," she said. "Turn around. Let's take a look at it."  
  
I swallowed hard and took a deep breath in through my nose to psyche myself up... then, very slowly, turned around to look at her.  
  
I'd grown quite a bit since I left... but so had she. She'd filled out a lot, so to speak, as well, and it definitely didn't make her any less terrifying. My knees turned to jelly and started to shake as she raised one startled eyebrow and then looked me over from bottom to top. Her mouth curved into a smile... and then she started *laughing*.  
  
Let me tell you, anybody who thinks Nagha the Serpent has a disturbing laugh has never been subjected to my sister.  
  
"Congratulations," she told me. "I really and truly do not think I want to know." She shook her head. "Lina, what did you *do* to yourself?"  
  
It took a moment for it to really get through to me what she'd just said and why it was important. I felt my skin prickle as I looked up at her. Maybe she was teasing... maybe Lina'd stopped by here and they'd decided to make a joke of it. But if Lina was a clone of me, then wouldn't she be just as scared of my sister... our sister... whatever... as I was?  
  
"What?" I asked weakly.  
  
She giggled. "Dad did used to say he wished he'd had a son... I don't think that's quite what he meant, though."  
  
"I'm not Lina," I said... or tried to say. It came out as more of a squeaky whisper than a sentence.  
  
"I wonder how he'll take it," she mused.  
  
"I'm *not* Lina!" I repeated desperately. She didn't look like she believed me... I had to be still dreaming. This whole damn thing had to be one big nightmare! The air in the room was starting to feel thick and cold, and my eyes were starting to prickle.  
  
"Okay, I'll play," she said. "Who are you, then?"  
  
I couldn't answer her. I thought I'd been horrified to meet Shadow, but that was nothing. This couldn't be real! I couldn't be just a clone, I couldn't!  
  
"I'm waiting," she prompted.  
  
"Excuse me," I said, and hurried out of the store. 


	9. 8: More Angst

Author's Note: My apologies, this one's late, short, and not particularly well-written. Will try to improve.  
  
---  
  
Shadow and Gloria were waiting for me outside the shop. I walked right past them.  
  
"Mr. Rian?" asked Shadow.  
  
I didn't answer her.  
  
"Hey, Rian!" said Gloria. "Where are you going?"  
  
"Mr. Rian!" Shadow repeated. "Wait up!"  
  
"No!" I said, without looking back.  
  
"Mr. Rian!" she wailed.  
  
"Shut up!" I shouted. I just couldn't take the idea of talking to anybody... I had to get *away* from here. If I didn't, I was just going to sit down and cry, and... well, I was probably going to start crying anyway, but I'd be damned if I'd do it in front of anybody! Boys do not cry.  
  
Boys don't cry... did that even apply to a guy who's a clone of a girl?  
  
I was halfway down the street when I heard my sister's voice. "Kid!" she shouted. "Come back here and..." she paused, and I stopped and glanced back. Shadow and Gloria were still standing next to the shop, and my sister was looking at them with some obvious surprise.  
  
"Okay," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "Now I'm *really* curious."  
  
Shadow let out a terrified shriek that probably woke the dead in neighbouring countries, grabbed Gloria's arm, and ran after me. "Mr. Rian!" she wailed. "Wait for us!"  
  
"Leave me alone!" I told her, and started walking again. God, she was going to follow me, wasn't she?  
  
People passing by seemed to be staring at me. Maybe I was imagining it... maybe they were wondering what I was shouting about. Or maybe they were wondering, like my sister, what had happened to Lina.  
  
I couldn't stand it. I ran.  
  
The river through the middle of the city runs along the floor of a shallow, swampy ravine. The ground there goes 'squish' when you step on it and there's lots of poison ivy and little bugs, but I doubt that's ever stopped kids from poking around down there. I'd used to go there and catch turtles and newts when I was li...  
  
No, *Lina* used to go play there when *she* was little. I'd never been little, had I? I hadn't even existed until about a month again!  
  
God, I had to stop thinking about it. If I didn't, I was going to go screaming nuts very, very quickly.  
  
I squished my way down into the ravine, sat down on a rock, and hung my head. Nobody could see me here, but I still wasn't going to cry if I could possibly help it. This could not be happening to me! It wasn't happening. I had to be still asleep... I was still dreaming and this was the most horrible nightmare I'd ever had in my life!  
  
I couldn't be a reflection. Not me. I wasn't a clone! I was *me*! I was the handsome and charming sorcerer, defender of travellers and slayer of Ruby-Eye Shabrinigdo, Rian Inverse! I was...  
  
Something suddenly cleared in my head, and I very nearly did start crying. Who the hell did I think I was *kidding*?  
  
Me? I was a skinny little kid who ran away from home 'cause he was scared of his sister and who got off by picking on bandits who couldn't fight back. I wouldn't have been able to *dent* Shabrinigdo if it hadn't been for Gloria and the Sword of Light... and I hadn't even really done that. That had been Lina. I'd never done *anything*.  
  
Nagha'd always known what I was; I was a jerk. I was a bully.  
  
And Nagha had never even met me, had she?  
  
I hung my head and hugged my knees against my chest. I was *not* going to cry. Boys don't cry...  
  
... but I did anyway.  
  
"Rian?" asked Gloria's voice. "Are you down here?"  
  
"There he is!" Shadow exclaimed. I heard bushes crunching as she approached. "Mr. Rian, what happened! Are you okay?"  
  
"Leave me alone," I moaned.  
  
"You don't need to be left alone," she told me. "You need to be cheered up! What's the matter?"  
  
Cheered up! How was she proposing to cheer me up? How could she possibly be so happy, anyway? "What is the matter with you?" I demanded. "Look at you! You're a clone! You're somebody else's reflection! Doesn't that *bother* you at all?"  
  
She stared at me, then shook her head. "Nope."  
  
"Well, why the hell not?" I wanted to know.  
  
"Mr. Rian, it isn't nice to swear," said Shadow.  
  
I gave up and looked at Gloria. "Remember your clone?" I asked her. "The guy who left with Lina?"  
  
Gloria stuck a finger in her mouth and thought about it. "Sort of."  
  
That was the best I'd probably get out of her. "So what if it turns out you're a clone of *him* instead?"  
  
She looked confused. "But you kept telling me I wasn't."  
  
"What if I was wrong?"  
  
Gloria considered it. The only conclusion she seemed able to come to, however, was, "what about it?"  
  
"It means you're not real," I said, restraining the urge to clobber her. "It means you don't exist!"  
  
"Really?" Gloria looked down at herself. "I look real to me."  
  
Trust Gloria. "It means you might as *well* not really exist," I told her. "It means nobody knows you, even people you thought did, not even your family! You didn't really do the things you thought you did. You're just a copy of another person."  
  
"But you know me," she pointed out.  
  
"Yeah, I know you, but nobody else..." I began, then sighed. "Forget it," I said, looking at the ground. Gloria wouldn't know an identity crisis if she found one floating in her tea... she probably couldn't even *spell* 'identity crisis.' And Shadow... well, if Shadow was my equal opposite, then of *course* she wasn't having a problem with this. If I had a problem with not being an individual, she'd think being a clone was the greatest thing in the world.  
  
"Do you need a hankie, Mr. Rian?" asked Shadow. She pulled one out and offered it to me.  
  
"No," I said.  
  
"But you're crying," she said. "You should blow your nose."  
  
"I am *not* crying!" I snapped. I got up and brushed wet leaves off the seat of my pants. "Come on. We're leaving."  
  
"Where are we going now?" asked Gloria.  
  
"A restaurant," I decided. I needed something to eat and some time to think.  
  
Gloria smiled. "Sounds good to me."  
  
"You two really shouldn't eat so much," Shadow said, as she and Gloria followed me out of the ravine. "Over-eating causes lots of health problems... you could get kidney stones or hardened arteries or..."  
  
"Shadow?" I said.  
  
"Yes, Mr. Rian, sir?"  
  
"Just shut up."  
  
I'm not sure whether stopping for lunch was a mistake or not... when the waiters brough our order, I suddenly found I didn't have much of an appetite. I picked at one plateful while Gloria polished off the rest and Shadow sat very politely eating a fruit salad.  
  
It did give me enough time, though, to decide what to do next, and it certainly cheered me up a bit when I realized that Vrumegon really *was* making a mistake chasing after Gloria and I. We really weren't any more guilty of Rezo's death than Shadow was! Not that the twit was likely to listen to me if I said that, of course.  
  
Really, the best plan of action for the present seemed to be to keep looking for Lina and Gourry. We could find them, turn them in, and get our reward... and then I'd have something to support myself with while I had my nervous breakdown.  
  
"Ahhh..." said Gloria, leaning back in her chair in a most unladylike fashion. "That hit the spot!" She found a toothpick and began putting it to use.  
  
"That was *disgusting*," Shadow patted her mouth delicately with her napkin. "I don't know how you can possibly eat so much, Miss Gloria!"  
  
"Gloria," I said. "If we were us and Vrumegon was trying to catch us and take us to Sairaag, and we didn't have the whole clone thing to worry about, what do you think we'd probably do?"  
  
"Hmm..." she mulled that over while she picked her teeth. "Go to Sairaag and find out who it is, so you could blow them up?"  
  
"That's what I thought, too," I said, nodding. "Okay, change of plans. We're going to Sairaag."  
  
"Right now?" Gloria asked.  
  
"No time like right now," I replied. "Come, ladies."  
  
I wish it had really been that cut-and-dried in my head... I think the only reason I could even talk about it so calmly was because part of me was still convinced this wasn't real. It made me wonder what I would do when it sank in. 


	10. 9: Mostly Conversation

Thought for the Day: If anime had been invented in America, would all of the characters be Asian?  
  
---  
  
Leaving right away was probably a dumb thing to do... it was getting towards time for sunset, and there were plenty of inns we could have stopped at. I think I would have gone nuts if we'd stayed, though. I just wanted to get as far away as possible, as fast as I could, and I knew I would never, ever come back.  
  
It was a weird feeling, knowing I didn't have a home to go back to anymore. I'd never intended to go home again anyway, but that had been a choice. That had been *wouldn't*. Wouldn't was fine. *Couldn't* was something else entirely.  
  
"That's a nice place, Rian," Gloria commented as we made our way into the hills.  
  
I didn't answer, but Shadow did. "Isn't it?" she said, with a beaming smile on her face. "There's no place like home! Where are *you* from, Miss Gloria?"  
  
"Oh, my family lives in Elmekia," Gloria told her.  
  
I hadn't known that... great, so Gloria will tell *Shadow* about her life, but not me? I was halfway through that thought when I stopped and metally kicked myself. I was being a jackass again; of course she hadn't told me. I hadn't *asked*.  
  
"If you like it here," Gloria added, "how come you left?" There was a moment's pause. "Rian?"  
  
"None of your business," I told her.  
  
Unfortunately, Shadow didn't seem to care whose business was what. "Miss Lina left because she didn't like the people here... mostly her sister's friends," she said, as annoyingly cheerful as always. "They were never very nice to her."  
  
"I *said* it was none of Gloria's business," I repeated loudly.  
  
"Not nice to you?" Gloria looked shocked. "And you didn't blow them up?"  
  
"Well, this was before she learned to do magic, you see," Shadow went on. "The bigger kids used to drop her in the rain barrel behind the house when they wanted to make her cry. There's all sorts of icky gross stuff and crawly creatures in the bottom," she added, making a face.  
  
"Shadow, for love of god," I said, "how many times do I have to tell you to shut up! Gloria doesn't need to know that!"  
  
"But she asked," said Shadow.  
  
I looked her in the eye. If Shadow were Lina's opposite, then she'd also be mine, and I doubted she could win a staring contest. Sure enough, after a few seconds she dropped her gaze.  
  
"I'm sorry, Mr. Rian," she said meekly.  
  
"Good," I nodded. "Come on. The faster we go, the sooner we'll get there."  
  
We kept going for a few minutes, without talking, then Gloria spoke up again.  
  
"How old were you when you left home?" Gloria asked me.  
  
"Mind your own business," I snarled.  
  
"Eleven," said Shadow. "Eleven years old."  
  
"Eleven?" Gloria stared at me. "You left home at age *eleven*?"  
  
"Yes," I said. "And I've told you three times now, it's not any of your damn business, so shut up already!"  
  
A bit more time passed in silence, but Gloria apparently couldn't contain her curiosity. I don't know why it even bothered me that she asked, since she'd forget in five minutes anyway.  
  
"Where did you go?" Gloria asked.  
  
"Nowhere," I said.  
  
Predictably, that seemed to puzzle her. "You must've gone somewhere... if you go nowhere, doesn't that mean you stay in the same spot?"  
  
"I just *left*, okay?" I said. "I say I went nowhere because I didn't start off with anywhere in mind. I was... I was just thinking that I was gonna show them. Someday I would be famous and then they'd all wish they'd been nice to me! But now it seems I don't even really exist, and I don't bloody well want to talk about it, so SHUT UP!"  
  
"Okay," she said.  
  
'Shut up' seems to have a very short statute of limitations... but when Shadow and Gloria started talking again, it wasn't about me, so this time I let it slide. Gloria wanted to know where Shadow had come from, and Shadow of course was only too happy to explain. I almost stopped her, since it wasn't a story I particularly wanted told, but then I realized that it wasn't a story about me. That had never happened to me... regardless of the fact that I remembered it.  
  
"Miss Lina and Miss Nagha were very mean," said Shadow regretfully. "They just left us there in the middle of nowhere, and told us that we shouldn't follow them."  
  
"They did?" asked Gloria.  
  
"Don't look at me," I told her, starting to feel almost cheerful about the whole thing. "I wasn't there!"  
  
Shadow wasn't finished her story. "So we were left there all on our lonesome! We had to find our way all by ourselves, and a big mean man came to try to rob us! It was terrible!"  
  
"Where did you go?" Gloria inquired.  
  
"We wandered," Shadow replied miserably. "We wanted to find somewhere to stay, maybe settle down and get jobs, but everybody had heard of Miss Lina and Miss Nagha, and nobody was ever nice to us!"  
  
A question occured to me at that point. I tried to push it aside, telling myself that it wasn't important and that I probably wouldn't like the answer anyway, but my curiosity quicklyy got the better of me.  
  
The last time I'd seen the *real* Nagha, she'd been just as happy as a clam at high tide, convinced that she'd found her One True Calling in Life. What had happened was that she'd mouthed off to the owner of what she'd decided was a second-rate hot spring, and he'd angrily told her that if she thought she could do better, she was welcome to give it a try.  
  
I'd honestly expected her to send the ice golem she'd been working on after the guy... which, if my experience of Nagha's golems was anything to go by, I'd be obliged to melt before it caused too much property damage. But to my surprise, she rose to the challenge, and in no time at all, the newly renamed WhiteSnake Spa was famous all over the continent. Rumor even had it that one of the regular customers was Beast Lady Zeras Metallium.  
  
And me? For the first couple of months Nagha had somehow talked me into keeping the spa's books for her, but I'd quickly gotten fed up with that and set out on my own again. Nagha could do her own damn math... if I wanted to sit and figure out sums all day, I'd have stayed in Zephilia and worked for my father. Shortly thereafter, of course, I'd met Gloria, and...  
  
No, all that had happened to *Lina*, not to me.  
  
"So you're here with us," I said to shadow. "What happened to the other *Nagha*?"  
  
"Oh, she married Prince William of Clarifloria," she replied cheerfully.  
  
I very nearly fell flat on my face. "Say what?"  
  
"Oh, yes!" Shadow nodded. "It was so romantic! He's not the crown prince, of course, you know... he's a third son and he doesn't have much money or power to speak of, but she said that didn't matter at all just so long as he loved her for herself!"  
  
*Romance*? Yes, it was Nagha's equal opposite, but still... "Shadow-Nagha got... married?" Egads, did that mean she might *reproduce*?  
  
"Mm-hm!" Shadow nodded. "It was a *beautiful* wedding! I was the maid of honour! We were going to invite Miss Lina and Miss Nagha, but we couldn't seem to find them," she added regretfully.  
  
"Uh-huh..." I said.  
  
"We keep in touch, of course," Shadow went on. "Since she's my bestest friend in the world and I couldn't do without her! Her last letter said she's also now the vice-president of the Clarifloria Royal Temperance Union!"  
  
That time I really *did* fall over.  
  
"Something wrong, Rian?" asked Gloria as she helped me up.  
  
"No... nothing... I'm fine," I said. When I found Lina I was going to have to thank her for skipping that particular wedding. Seeing Nagha... or any reasonable facsimile thereof... getting *married* was not something I wanted to contemplate.  
  
The sun sank lower in the sky as we continued up the road, coming eventually over a hill to where we could see the lights of a port city at the edge of a natural harbour.  
  
"What's that place?" asked Gloria.  
  
"I think it's Sanboa," I replied, and brightened up a little as I remembered something. "There's a resteraunt there that's supposed to make the best fish and chips in Zephilia!"  
  
"Great!" Gloria exclaimed. "Let's stop there for dinner!"  
  
I was all for it, but before I could answer, a very familiar monotone voice spoke up from behind us.  
  
"You will not be stopping," it said. "You will be coming with me."  
  
Gloria and I groaned in unison and turned around. There, sure enough, was yet another Vrumegon.  
  
"Can you please leave us alone for just five minutes?" I asked, exasperated.  
  
"I am on a mission," he replied.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said. "I know. You're on a mission to take us to Sairaag and you'll do it no matter what." I stepped towards him and cracked my knuckles. "Stand back, ladies," I told Gloria and Shadow, rubbing my hands together. "It's time for some stress relief!" 


	11. 10: Two Familiar Faces

I looked at Vrumegon. Vrumegon looked at me. The evening breeze rustled the trees in a suitably ominous fashion.  
  
"You are wasting your time," he intoned. "I have told you before, you cannot kill me."  
  
"Sure I can," I told him. "The annoying part is that I have to keep on doing it over and over again!"  
  
Vrumegon was, as usual, not ruffled in the slightest. "You would spare yourselves a great deal of trouble by simply coming with me to Sairaag," he said.  
  
I shook my head. "Are you learning impaired?" I asked. "I'm going to give you one more chance, okay? I am *not* the person you are looking for. You want Lina Inverse... I'm not her, and neither is Shadow. Understand?"  
  
"My employer gave orders for me to bring all three of you back with me," replied Vrumegon. "She will determine which of you is the individual she wants."  
  
"Fine," I said. "You asked for it."  
  
I took a couple of steps back and, since I didn't have sleeves to roll up, slowly pulled my gloves off. Vrumegon just watched me, blank as always. Sheesh, even the bandits were smarter than this idio... they could at least recognize the signs and get ready to run! I tucked the gloves into my belt to keep them out of the way, then raised my hands and began to recite.  
  
"Darkness beyond twilight," I said, savouring the words and the rush from the magic. "Crimson beyond blood that flows..."  
  
"DON'T!" squealed a voice, and the next thing I knew I was lying flat on my face in the mud with Shadow clinging to me from behind.  
  
I pushed myself up and spat out a mouthful of dirt. "Shadow!"  
  
"You can't!" she wailed. "You mustn't! How could you even think of using such a spell on another living thing? There must be other ways to..."  
  
"Look out!" Gloria shouted.  
  
"Freeze Arrow!" ordered Vrumegon.  
  
Gloria dashed in between us and Vrumegon, pulling out her sword to deflect the spell... but didn't quite make it. The arrow whistled between her legs and earthed itself, and there was a crackling sound as a layer of ice spread out from it's landing place. I shoved Shadow out of the way into the bushes and cast a levitation spell.  
  
"Hey!" exclaimed Gloria. She hadn't moved in time, and was now in ice up to her knees.  
  
"Distract him!" I told her.  
  
"How?" she wanted to know.  
  
I would have answered her, except that Vrumegon sent another arrow her way and froze her solid. Great.  
  
"Mr. Vrumegon!" came Shadow's voice. "That wasn't very nice at all!" She pulled herself out of the bushes and walked towards him. "Why does everybody always have to be so mean to each other! Why don't we just *talk* about this?"  
  
"There is nothing to talk about," said Vrumegon.  
  
"There's *everything* to talk about!" Shadow insisted. "Look what you did to poor Miss Gloria! That's no way to treat people at all!"  
  
I landed on top of some rocks a few yards away. If she could just keep him distracted...  
  
Shadow put a hand in the middle of Gloria's back and cast a spell to thaw her out. Gloria blinked a couple of times, then toppled over and landed on her back with a thud. "If you want us to go to Sairaag with you," Shadow went on. "Why not just ask *nicely*? You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Mr. Vrumegon!"  
  
Vrumegon was just looking at her in his undead sort of way... I guess *he* didn't know what to make of this, either. Perfect... I was *so* going to enjoy this.  
  
"Darkness beyond twilight," I started again. "Crimson beyond blood that flows..."  
  
Gloria sat up a bit and shook her head, dazed. "Wha?" she asked.  
  
"Didn't it ever occur to you," Shadow continued, "that if you just said *please* we might go with you willingly?"  
  
"Buried in the flow of time," I went on. "In thy great name, I pledge myself to darkness..."  
  
"Come on, Mr. Vrumegon," said Shadow. "Just say please!"  
  
For once, what might've been a flicker of actual surprise crossed Vrumegon's face. "Say please?" he said.  
  
Shadow nodded eagerly.  
  
"Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed..."  
  
Vrumegon stared at Shadow a moment, then said, "please."  
  
"Please what?" she prompted.  
  
"Please come with me to Sairaag." This was clearly an effort on Vrumegon's part.  
  
Shadow gave him a dazzling smile. "There! Was that so difficult?"  
  
"By the power you and I posess!"  
  
Gloria still looked a bit dazed, but just then she noticed me out of the corner of her eye, and jumped to her feet. "Get out of the way!" she exclaimed, and grabbed Shadow and dived down the hill. Vrumegon looked at me.  
  
"Oh no," he said, still with a complete deadpan.  
  
"DRAGON SLAVE!" I shouted.  
  
Okay, yeah, I guess it was overkill. But I *needed* to vent.  
  
With Vrumegon (whichever one this was... I'd lost count days ago) thus dispatched, along with a big chunk of the mountainside, I brushed my hands off on the seat of my pants and went looking for the girls.  
  
"Gloria!" I called. "Shadow! Where'd you go?"  
  
"Down here!" Gloria's voice replied.  
  
It seemed that the two of them had gone tumbling down the mountain in a heap and landed in a bushy patch at the bottom. Gloria was sitting there, awkwardly patting Shadow's back... Shadow was clinging to her and sobbing unconsolably.  
  
"How could you?" she asked me tearfully. "He was just starting to be nice! He said *please*! Miss Gloria, you heard him, right?"  
  
Gloria, naturally, could not remember.  
  
It took some effort, but eventually we got Shadow up. I crossed my fingers behind my back and promised never to use the dragon slave on a human being ever again, and that seemed to help. She was still sniffling and blowing her nose on a filly little hankie when, just as the sun dipped below the horizon, we found the path again and headed for Sanboa.  
  
"Rian," Gloria said suddenly.  
  
"What?" I asked.  
  
"There's something with glowing eyes over there," she said, pointing into the bush.  
  
I stopped short and followed her finger. At first I couldn't see anything, but then there they were... a pair of eyes, glowing greenish-blue in the dark like a cat's.  
  
Shadow yelped and darted behind me. "What's that?"  
  
Gloria pulled out her sword. "Who's there?" she asked.  
  
"Show yourself!" I said to the being. It was getting too dark to see very well. I held out a hand and cast a light spell. The glowing eyes vanished into the leafy shadows for a moment, then the foliage rustled and a tall figure dressed in white stepped out... and stopped short to stare at us.  
  
"Zel!" Gloria exclaimed happily.  
  
"Zelgadiss!" I said at the same moment.  
  
"Monster!" Shadow shouted, throwing her arms around me and nearly cutting off my air supply.  
  
"Cut that out!" I told her. I untangled myself, then gave her a good shake. "Stop trying to choke me, will you? It's just Zelgadiss!"  
  
"He's scary!" she wailed.  
  
I gave up on her and turned around to look at Zel. He'd looked happy to see us... or as near to happy as he can come, which isn't very... a moment ago. Now he was just standing there with an expression of surprise and puzzlement.  
  
Oh. Right.  
  
"How come you're here, Zel?" asked Gloria, who true to form hadn't yet noticed that anything was amiss.  
  
"Huh?" the chimaera asked, shaking his head a bit as if snapping out of a trance. "I'm on my way to Sairaag." He looked us over. "What... happened to you two?"  
  
I groaned. "It's a long story," I said, truthfully enough. "Shadow, do you want to let go of my arm?" She'd latched on to me again, and was squeezing the limb so hard I was losing feeling my fingers.  
  
She snatched her hands away and put the ends of her fingers in her mouth instead. "What is that?" she asked.  
  
"That's Zelgadiss," I told her again. "It's okay, he's not as scary as he looks."  
  
"Is that supposed to be a *complement*?" Zel inquired.  
  
"But what is he?" Shadow asked nervously.  
  
"That's another long story," I said. I looked around... Shadow was terrified and Zel was confused, and Gloria was trying to figure out what Shadow and Zel were respectively terrified and confused about. "How about we head for that resteraunt," I suggested. "I'm not gonna tell long stories on an empty stomach."  
  
That idea seemed agreeable to everybody, and as a group we headed for town.  
  
"Well, that is, definitely, Lina," Zel muttered under his breath as we went.  
  
"No, I'm not," I corrected. "I'll explain when we get there." 


	12. 11: Dinner and Random Insanity

Author's Note: More music to go with this story: 'Somewhere in Between' by Lifehouse and 'Red Rain' by Peter Gabriel.  
  
Author's Note²: And now for something completely shameless. You want to know what inspires me? Fanart. ^_^ Those of you who remember 'Slayers; Reprise' will recall that updates often included new fanart... and I'd love for anybody out there who can draw to do pics of Rian or Gloria. Hey, I *warned* you this would be shameless!  
  
---  
  
Up until we reached Sanboa, the idea that we might be able to find Lina and Gourry in Sairaag was nothing but a guess. It was an *educated* guess, since it's fair to say we'd probably have a pretty good idea what they'd do in x situation, but still a guess. We didn't know what might've happened to make them change their minds.  
  
When we walked in to the fish and chips resteraunt, we got our first real indication that we were on the right track.  
  
"I'll be right with you," a waitress said pleasantly as we sat down... then she did a double-take, and everything she was carrying slid out of her hands and clattered on the floor.  
  
"Mr. Manager, sir!" she wailed, running into the kitchen.  
  
Gloria scratched her head. "What's with her?"  
  
"She didn't even clean up," said Shadow, looking at the spilled food all over the floor.  
  
I shook my head. "What a waste of good fish and chips!"  
  
Zelgadiss didn't say anything. This might've been because he had anothing to say, but it also might've been because just then, an enormous man in a striped apron came stamping out of the kitchen, looking like a volcano about to erupt. I swear there was visible black smoke billowing out of his ears.  
  
"You two!" he roared, pointing one fat finger and Gloria and myself. "What did I tell you?! Didn't I *tell* you never to darken my door again?"  
  
"No," said Gloria. "I don't think so." She looked at me. "Did he?"  
  
"When was that?" I asked.  
  
The manager wasn't in a mood to answer. "Get out!" he ordered.  
  
"Answer my question!" I hollered back. "When were we here last?"  
  
"Just the other day," he said. "I doubt you've forgotten, now get!"  
  
"One more question!" I held up a finger. "Where did we go when we left?"  
  
"Are you making fun of me?" he growled.  
  
"I'm asking you a question," I replied as reasonably as I could. "Are you going to answer it, or do I have to make you wish you'd let us stay for dinner?"  
  
"How am I supposed to know?" the manager demanded. "Get out of my resteraunt! NOW!"  
  
We got.  
  
"You're mean!" Shadow told the manager as he pushed us out the front door. "We didn't do anything!"  
  
"Shadow," I groaned, "for heaven's sake, give it a rest!"  
  
"And stay out!" the manager concluded, slamming the door on us.  
  
It took us a while to find a resteraunt in Sanboa that hadn't heard of Lina and Gourry. We got kicked out of two more before we found a tiny, smoky little Italian place that we would normally have passed over as decidedly third-rate... which, on reflection, was probably exactly what the originals had done. The waiter gave us a bit of a suspicious look when Gloria and I each ordered a quadruple helping of spaghetti with lasagna on the side, but he didn't go for the manager or ask us to leave.  
  
Shadow asked for a salad, and Zel just had coffee.  
  
"I had my mouth all ready for fish and chips," Gloria whined.  
  
"Well, if you don't want spaghetti, I'll eat yours," I told her.  
  
"You two are *pigs*," Shadow informed us severely. "Don't you worry at *all* about your health?"  
  
"No," we replied in unison.  
  
She sighed the sigh of a martyr.  
  
"While we're waiting," Zel spoke up, "you were going to tell me... er... how you ended up this way." He glanced at Shadow. "And hopefully, why there's two of you."  
  
"Right, right," I said. "Well, Shadow here was made a couple of years ago. What happened was that Nagha and I... I mean Nagha and Lina... they were hired to find this magic mirror..."  
  
It took a while to tell the whole story. The spaghetti arrived before I was done, and then of course we had to take a break and make sure that Gloria didn't get more than her share. I don't care what my sister says about me being short like Mom's side of the family... I'm going to reach that growth spurt if it kills me.  
  
"Look at them," lamented Shadow, who had insisted on sitting as far from Zel as possible, but was really starting to look like she regretted the decision. "I try so hard... I tell them things for their own good and they don't *listen* to me!"  
  
"Get used to it," Zel advised her, adding cream to his coffee.  
  
When we finished our dinner, I picked up the story where I'd left it off and brought things up to now. It was good and dark by the time I'd finished up. Shadow had ordered a cup of tea and was sitting and sipping it politely, while Zelgadiss listened and Gloria dozed.  
  
"... and I guess that's about it," I concluded. "We met another Vrumegon earlier this evening, but I blew him up... and then we ran into you."  
  
Zel sat still for a moment, then blinked and looked up suddenly, as if he'd just woken up from a nap. "Hmm? You're finished."  
  
"Yes," I said. "Weren't you listening? I can repeat something if you need..."  
  
"No, that's fine," Zel said quickly. He picked up his coffee cup and started to take a drink, then blinked and glanced down into it as he realized he'd already drained it dry. "So now you're headed for Sairaag, hoping to meet up with Lina and Gourry there?"  
  
I nodded. "Yup! What about you?"  
  
Zel looked reluctant to reply, for some weird reason. He put his cup down. "I'm going to Sairaag also," he said finally. "Vrumegon has been following me, too. I'm hoping that when I get there, I can find out who was responsible for those wanted posters."  
  
"Any idea who it was?" I wanted to know.  
  
He shook his head. "I have some suspicions, but I don't know for certain. All I'm sure of is that it was somebody who was quite close to Rezo."  
  
"That makes sense," I agreed.  
  
The waiter came to pick up our dishes. "Are you ready for dessert, yet?" he asked. "We've got a special on tonight... order the tiramisu and you get a side of chocolate-covered carrots for free."  
  
I got the distinct impression I was somehow missing out on a joke, but I'm not going to say no to free chocolate. "Sure," I told him. "Three helpings, please!"  
  
"Me, too!" said Gloria, suddenly waking up again.  
  
"Coming right up," the waiter nodded and turned to Zel and Shadow.  
  
"Strawberry ice cream," said Shadow. "Just a small one... I'm pretty full, thank you very much, sir."  
  
Zel held out his mug. "Just refill this, if you don't mind."  
  
As the waiter reached for it, a long shadow suddenly fell over our table. I looked up to see what had gotten between us and the light... and felt all the blood drain from my face. Standing over us was an absolutely enormous man, nearly seven feet tall with bulging muscles protruding from his torn shirt. The dinged and dented broadsword in the scabbard on his back was to a similar scale, and he had a variety of scars... the kind that seem to be there mostly to emphasize a macho guy's cheekbones. Shadow yelped and scurried under the table. Even Zel turned pale.  
  
I swallowed and stood up. "What do you want?" I asked.  
  
"It's *you*!" the man exclaimed... but he didn't mean me. Instead, he pointed one gigantic finger at Gloria.  
  
"Huh?" she looked up from mopping her plate with a slice of bread. "Me?"  
  
The man held out his arms to her, and the fierce expression on his face suddenly melted into a surprisingly good imitation of a lovesick puppy.  
  
"Miss Lah-lah!" he exclaimed. "You've come *back* to me!"  
  
Gloria blinked a couple of times. "Miss what?"  
  
"Give me a kiss!" the man puckered up.  
  
"Eyug!" Gloria pushed her chair away from the table. "Get away from me!"  
  
"One kiss!" he insisted, reaching for her.  
  
The next few minutes were... weird. Zel, Shadow, and I sat there and watched while this nut case chased Gloria all over the resteraunt, totally oblivious to her insisting that she was not his long-lost lady love.  
  
"Help!" she shouted. "Stop! Let go! Go away! My name is *not* Lah-lah!"  
  
"Please, Miss Lah-lah!" the man begged. "Whatever I did, I promise you, I'm sorry! Won't you come to my arms?"  
  
"No!"  
  
I looked at Zel. He shrugged.  
  
I looked at Shadow. She had stars in her eyes. "Miss Gloria must look like his old girlfriend!" she exclaimed. "How romantic!"  
  
"Rian!" Gloria begged. "Do something! Blow him up! Anything! Help!"  
  
I sighed. "You owe me one. Burst Rondo!"  
  
In retrospect, I guess that really wasn't a very good idea. If we ever came back to Sanboa again, we were *really* going to have a terrible time finding a place to eat.  
  
We ended up sleeping in the bush again, and got back on our way very early the next morning... Gloria, Shadow, Zelgadiss, and me. Since we were all going the same way anyhow, it made sense to travel together, and having Zel along gave us one more person who could kill a share of the Vrumegons.  
  
"Oh, wow," said Shadow, when I'd finished telling her who Zel was and how we knew him. "Is that all true, Mr. Zelgadiss? You poor thing! You're not a monster at all, then!"  
  
"Unfortunately, yes," he said. "It is true. And I am."  
  
"No, you're not," Shadow told him firmly. "Only on the outside, and it's what's in your heart that's important! Isn't that right, Mr. Rian?"  
  
I groaned. Every time I thought she was *almost* starting to be bearable...  
  
Shadow hooked her arm through Zel's. He looked startled and tried gently to make her let go, but she didn't. "How much further is it to Sairaag?" she wanted to know.  
  
"About three days, I think," I said.  
  
Zel nodded. "A bit less than that, actually."  
  
"Well, that's no time at all!" said Shadow brightly. "Let's go!"  
  
I looked at Zel, and could tell that he was thinking the exact same thing I was thinking: it didn't matter how far it was to Sairaag... what mattered was that the relevant length of time couldn't possibly be over fast enough. 


	13. 12: Arrival at Sairaag

Author's Note: Sorry, another short one. As a lame attempt to make up for it: if anybody's interested, I've got a doujinshi online... http://guestdoujin.homestead.com/mooned.html  
  
Author's Note²: Next time you go into Dairy Queen, request a Black Forest Blizzard... my own invention! It contains cocoa fudge, chocolate chips, and cherry topping. ^_^ Deliscious.  
  
---  
  
I'm not sure if getting to Sairaag actually did take longer than we'd thought it would, or whether it just seemed that way because we were getting more and more Vrumegons. I guess they were clustering close to their point of origin. Or maybe it just didn't take as long for their creator to whip up another one and send it after us. Either way, they were coming in thick and fast. We must've got nearly a dozen of them in two or three days... I can't even remember what we did with most of them.  
  
"Hey, Rian," Gloria said to me on the third day, as the huge leafy shape of Flagoon began to rise above the hills ahead of us. "Are you okay?"  
  
I'd been almost dozing, but my feet had gotten a rhythm going so they could keep walking without my brain's input. When Gloria said my name, though, I woke up a bit; the autopilot on my legs cut out, and I almost fell over.  
  
"Careful!" she said, grabbing my arm to straighten me up again.  
  
"Don't touch me," I grouched, pulling out of her grip. Gloria blinked at me, looking worried... I guess I was acting a little grouchier than usual, but I think I had a good enough excuse. "What did you say?" I asked.  
  
"You look sleepy," she said. "Are you all right?"  
  
"I'm fine," I told her.  
  
Gloria seemed to be willing to take my word for it, but Shadow let go of Zel and trotted up next to me. "Are you sure about that, Mr. Rian?" she asked. "Your eyes are all dark, right under here." She ran her fingers along her lower eyelids. "You should put cucumber juice on it! That's what Miss Nagha would say!"  
  
"I'm *fine*," I repeated. It must've come out a little meaner-sounding than I'd meant it to, because she immediately dropped back a couple of steps and concentrated on the road in front of her.  
  
"Okay," she said.  
  
I looked back at the fourth member of our party, but unlike the girls, Zel was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Good. I was getting annoyed enough with the girls clucking over me all the time; I didn't need Zel starting in, too. I'm almost sixteen, for crying out loud...  
  
Was I? After all, I'd only really existed for... okay, not gonna think about that.  
  
... anyway, I could look out for myself... and I was fine. I was determined not to let the whole reflection thing get to me, and so far I'd been doing a pretty good job, if I did say so myself. I just hadn't been sleeping too well.  
  
It was pretty dumb, really, my not being able to sleep. I ought to be too old to let something as silly as a bad dream bug me so much. Especially the same stupid ones over and over again. By the third or fourth time you dream something, you ought to know you're dreaming when it starts and be able to wake yourself up.  
  
For some reason, however, that wasn't working for me, and every time I nodded off, I'd have the same dumb dreams. I'd be stuck in a mirror that got broken, or a puddle that got stamped in or that dried up in the sun. Or the worst one was where I was standing in the middle of a crowded street, trying to get somebody's attention and nobody could see me or hear me. When I tried to force somebody to pay attention by stepping right into their path, they just kept going and walked right on through me. I wasn't really there... I didn't exist.  
  
I'd been looking forward to getting to Sairaag because I thought I might be less likely to have nightmares if I were sleeping in a bed instead of at the side of the road, but now that the city was less than a day away, I found I didn't really want to hurry. This person was still sending Vrumegons after us... whoever they were, he or she was patient. Why should we hurry for their benefit?  
  
"Aha!" a voice exclaimed from behind us. "I have caught up with you at last, Lina Inverse!"  
  
Zel, Gloria, and Shadow all stopped and started to look to see who it was, but I just kept walking. Whoever this was, he wasn't talking to me, and I was sick and tired of the whole mess.  
  
"Mr. Rian," said Shadow, hurrying to follow me. "Wait a minute!"  
  
"Hey!" the man exclaimed. "I *said*, 'I have caught up with you at last, Lina Inverse!'"  
  
"Mr. Rian!" Shadow repeated.  
  
"Hey, Rian," said Gloria, coming up beside me, "there's a man back there who..."  
  
"I know, and I don't care," I told her.  
  
Somewhere behind us, Zelgadiss sighed and then he, too, started walking again without giving our challenger another look.  
  
"Hey, you, are you listening to me?" the guy demanded, his voice growing fainter behind me. "Come back here! You don't just walk away from... hey!" I heard footsteps as he ran to catch up.  
  
"Mr. Rian," said Shadow, "it isn't *nice* to just ignore peop..." she cut herself off as a huge hand grabbed her by the collar, and the next thing any of us knew, she was lifted bodily off the ground.  
  
"As I was saying," the man snarled. He was another enormous hero-type, enough like the one we'd met in Sanboa to make Gloria look a bit nervous. Unlike the last one, though, he looked like he'd been through some tough times recently; he walked with a limp, had a black eye, and his clothes looked rather charred. And unlike the last one, he showed no signs of chasing after Gloria... his attention was focussed a hundred percent on Shadow.  
  
"I have caught up with you at last, Lina Inverse!" he said. "Now I will make you pay for what you did to me last time we met... and collect the price on your head as well!"  
  
Shadow, of course, burst into tears.  
  
"Oh, sir!" she began. "I..."  
  
"DON'T!" I shouted. "Don't start! I'm tired of you *whining* all the time!" I poked the hero guy in the abs, which was about as high as I could reach on him. "Put her down and get out of our way!" I snapped. "She's not Lina Inverse and I'm not Lina Inverse, and we've got enough problems with six million Vrumegons following us around without you showing up, too! Put Shadow *down* and hit the road, or I swear to god whatever Lina did to you is gonna look like tender mercy once I get started!"  
  
Everybody stared at me.  
  
"Rian," said Gloria, "are you *totally* sure you're feeling okay?"  
  
The hero guy apparently didn't know *what* to think. He just stood there holding Shadow in one hand... until behind him something went 'cruch.' He gritted his teeth and his eyes opened wide as Zelgadiss twisted his arm up behind his back.  
  
"Just put her down," the chimaera told him tiredly.  
  
Hero-boy dropped Shadow and, once Zel let go of him, ran.  
  
"Mr. Zelgadiss!" Shadow exclaimed, with stars in her eyes. "You saved my *life*!" She threw her arms around his middle and gave him as much of a squeeze as you can give to a rock. "Thank you so much!"  
  
*He* saved her life? "What about me?" I demanded.  
  
"Rian," Gloria put a hand on my shoulder.  
  
I squirmed and pushed it off. "Fine. Whatever. Let's *go*. It'll be nice to sleep in a real bed tonight."  
  
"I wouldn't be so sure," said Zel, still trying to peel Shadow off him as he followed me. "I doubt we'll be welcome in Sairaag, not with somebody there offering a price for our heads."  
  
"If I wanted your input, Mr. Sunshine," I growled, "I'd ask for it."  
  
It was near dusk when we reached the city walls. I'd lagged behind the others most of the way... and tried to ignore the fact that they kept talking about me in voices they thought were too low for me to hear. I couldn't make out more than bits and pieces of the conversations, but the general idea seemed to be that I was acting surly even for me, and they were worried about me. Well, excuse me. Am I not allowed to be in a bad mood if I want to?  
  
There wasn't anything for them to worry *about*, anyway. I was fine. I was fine with having Shadow around, I was fine with going to Sairaag, I was fine with being a copy myself, I was fine with the whole damn thing.  
  
"Wait!" Zel hissed, grabbing the sash of Shadow's pinafore to keep her from walking right up to the gates of the city. All four of us retreated into the bushes to hide. "If we try to just walk through, we'll be recognized."  
  
"Lovely," I said. "How are we going to get in, then?"  
  
Zel thought for a moment. "I know of a secret way into the city," he said. "However, it will take us directly into the mansion Rezo used to own here... if the person we're looking for is indeed a follower of his, we may be walking right into their hands."  
  
"Let 'em try," I said darkly.  
  
Zel raised an eyebrow. "Then again, maybe not," he muttered. In a louder voice, he added, "this way."  
  
We crept through the shrubbery around the edges of the city walls; Zel first, with Shadow behind him, then me, then Gloria. "Ohh, this is creepy!" whispered Shadow.  
  
"Would you mind letting go of me?" Zel asked her.  
  
"Sorry, Mr. Zelgadiss."  
  
A few more minutes of crawling through the bushes brought us to a small open space next to the wall. Zel went up to it and started feeling the bricks.  
  
"Let me see," he said to himself. "Which one was it? Ahhh." He pushed one, and there were a series of mechanical clicks from the other side, followed by a grinding noise as part of the wall swung open. Zel held out a hand and cast a small lighting spell, which illuminated a flight of stone steps, leading down into darkness. Shadow made a scared little noise and clung to Zel's arm.  
  
"Follow me," said Zel, and we started down the stairs. 


	14. 13: Surprises for Everybody

Author's Note: Well, here's the next chapter, finally... and here also is where you people get very angry with me, as I've gathered from the reviews that this is not what you were expecting to happen next. Oh, well. I suppose if you don't like it, you'll just gripe at me and then stop reading it. Which will make me cry, and I'll stop writing it. Deal? Okay, deal.  
  
Author's Note²: Things I need to draw... egg me on, folks. [1] Canalle Vorphede in an 80's prom queen dress, leaning on a black trans am (possibly with some lyrics from 'You Shook Me'). [2] Kane and Milly as Spike and Faye from 'Cowboy Bebop,' although I'm sure it's been done. [3] Rian doing 'Johnny B. Goode,' ala Marty McFly. [4] Rian and Kane arguing about whose cape is cooler.  
  
---  
  
The tunnel led into a dark, twisting underground passageway. It was the sort of place where you expect any moment to come into a big cavern with things like luminescent moss, giant crystals, and random dripping-water noises, but all we found around every corner was more of the same dark, silent tunnel. There were no torches or candles... in fact, there wasn't even anywhere to put them; the walls were smooth and bare, with no holes or brackets. Were people just supposed to wander along here in the dark?  
  
Then again, the tunnel led to *Rezo's* manor... and what did Rezo need with candles or torches?  
  
"I'm getting dizzy," Gloria complained, as the tunnel rounded such a sharp bend that it seemed to double back on itself. It didn't just bend back and forth, either... it went up and down and all over the place, although on average it seemed to slope down. Zel's lighting spell made our shadows move as if they belonged to other people... it reminded me unpleasantly of the weird worlds inside the mirrors and puddles in my nightmares.  
  
"The roots of Flagoon run all under the city," Zel replied. "Going around them was easier than cutting through them."  
  
I looked up at the ceiling and shivered a little... when you think of Flagoon, the image that comes to mind is of this giant tree standing over the city like a tent. You don't think about the roots, but for a moment I could feel this *presence* in the earth all around me. It was as if Flagoon knew I was there, and was watching me... gave me a mild case of the creeps.  
  
Shadow must've felt it, too; she tightened her grip on Zel and whimpered. I wondered if it were possible to cut off the circulation in a stone arm.  
  
"Up here," said Zel, although there wasn't another direction to go in. The passage went gently uphill for a ways, then came to a spiral staircase, where Zel allowed the light spell to extinguish itself. Shadow yelped in the darkness... but it didn't last very long. As our eyes adjusted, we could see moonlight filtering down the steps.  
  
Zel started up.  
  
I didn't count the stairs on the way, but I ended up wishing I had; there were an awful lot of them. We probably went up two or three stories before we came to the top. There was a small skylight there, and a door. I reached out and tried the handle to see if it was locked, and was surprised to find that it wasn't. The mechanism clicked, and the door swung open.  
  
On the other side of it was a long hallway with a bay window at one end. There were other doors all up and down the hallway, and once we'd shut the one we'd come through, it looked just like the rest. There was no way to tell it was a secret passageway and not just a linen closet or something.  
  
"Now..." Zel looked around. Up ahead, the hallway divided into three. "It's been some time since I was in this house... which way was it..."  
  
Suddenly, a woman's voice, not too far away, gave a high-pitched shriek, followed by a cry of, "I don't *wanna* fight this yucky thing!"  
  
I glanced quickly at Shadow to make sure it wasn't *her* off there somewhere yelling, but she was still clinging to Zel, her eyes as round as saucers.  
  
"There are yucky things here?" she asked in a panic.  
  
"It came from this direction," Gloria pointed down the left passage. And that direction, we went.  
  
Whether it was the direction Zel had in mind or not, it was definitely leading to *something*. We could hear the sounds of fighting getting closer and closer. Somebody cast a Bram Brazer, swords clashed against each other, and I was pretty sure I heard the voice of one or more Vrumegons in with the mix.  
  
Following the noises brought us to a balcony where a number of cut glass windows looked down on a big indoor courtyard. Zel went up to one of these and looked out, then backed up, kicked the glass out of the window, and leapt through, sword in hand.  
  
"Wow!" exclaimed Shadow, with hearts in her eyes. "Look at him, Mr. Rian... isn't he *heroic*?"  
  
As if she wasn't annoying enough when she *wasn't* lovesick. "Eh," I said, shrugging. "That wasn't so special... watch."  
  
I went over to the next window, wound up, and kicked it the same way Zel had... to absolutely no effect. All I did was stub my toe.  
  
"Mr. Rian?" Shadow asked as I hopped on one foot, cursing. "Mr. Rian, are you okay?"  
  
"Yes!" I snarled. "I'm fine! I meant to do that!"  
  
"You *meant* to hurt your foot and dance around like that?" Gloria asked, scratching her head.  
  
"Shut up," I told her, and limped over to the window Zel had broken to see what was going on down below.  
  
Four people were standing in a tight circle, backs in; Zel, Lina, and Gourry with drawn swords, and a dark-haired girl in white who wasn't carrying a weapon I could see. All around themwere torn and charred robes of half a dozen fallen Vrumegons.  
  
"Don't be fooled," Zel told the others. "*She's* the one controlling them!"  
  
Their gazes followed his towards a shadowy area on a staircase, just out of sight from the window. I held on to the inner edge of the window opening and leaned forward, trying to get a better look. There was somebody there, descending the staircase, but in the dim light I couldn't see who...  
  
"Be careful!" Shadow exclaimed. "You'll fall!"  
  
The next thing I knew, she'd grabbed me around the knees, nearly pulling me over on top of her.  
  
"Hey!" I said, waving my arms wildly as I tried to regain my balance. I'd nearly made it when Shadow, having finally noticed I might be about to fall on *her*, shifted her grip to my belt and tried to push me upright again. This obviously didn't help any, and a few moments later, we both toppled out the window.  
  
Shadow screamed good and loud on the way down, but shut up when the landing knocked the wind out of her. We rolled a ways, gathering up a third person into our tangled ball of arms and legs, before coming to rest smack against a wall. When I finally got myelf reoriented, I was lying belly-up on the stone floor, with Shadow clinging to me and wailing, and Lina sitting on my chest trying to strangle me.  
  
"Disgusting pervert!" hollered Lina.  
  
"Get off!" I gasped, trying to push her away. It wasn't until a moment later that I realized what I was pushing on, and before I could do anything about it, she let go of my neck and drove her elbow into my stomach instead. I grabbed her arm to try and twist it behind her back, but that didn't work too well, and she pulled my hair... and all this time Shadow was pulling on our clothes and begging us to stop fighting...  
  
"What is the meaning of this?" a voice demanded.  
  
Lina, Shadow, and I stopped what we were doing and looked up. A woman in an interesting leather outfit was standing over us, looking very displeased. I was still lying flat on my back on the ground, and just inches away from being able to see her underwear... I tried to stretch forward a bit without her noticing, but couldn't do it with Lina sitting on me and Shadow clinging to my shirt.  
  
"Which one of you is Lina Inverse?" the woman wanted to know.  
  
"Her!" I pointed to the nearest head of red hair, which happened to belong to Shadow. Oops. Oh, well.  
  
"She is!" Shadow pointed to Lina.  
  
"Him!" Lina jabbed a finger into my middle.  
  
Each of us looked at the one we were pointing at, at the one pointing at us, then at the woman. We all grinned nervously.  
  
The woman wasn't finding it funny. She looked at us with a rather sour expression, then at Zel, Gourry, and the dark-haired girl. The former two shrugged. The latter was just staring, her mouth a round pink 'O' of surprise.  
  
"Get off of me," I grunted, squirming out from underneath Lina and Shadow. "Lady," I said to the woman in leather, "I came here to tell you to call of your Vrumegons... I'm not Lina Inverse. And now that I've *told* you that, I'll just be on my..."  
  
That's when Lina hit me in the back of the head.  
  
"You again, you little freak!" she snapped, as I rubbed my skull. "What are you doing here!"  
  
"Raging bitch!" I hollered back. "What do you *think* I'm doing here? I'm trying to figure out who wants to arrest me... or to arrest *you*, anyway!"  
  
"Don't!" whined Shadow. "Don't fight! Mr. Zelgadiss, make them stop!"   
  
Fortunately for him, Mr. Zelgadiss was smarter than that.  
  
"What is *that*?" Lina demanded, pointing at Shadow. "Where did *she* come from? Don't tell me you've been playing with that mirror!"  
  
"Don't blame *me* for her," I snarled. "That one's all *your* fault!"  
  
"What do you mean she's my fault?"  
  
"I mean that's *your* damn wussy shadow reflection, that's what I mean!"  
  
Lina opened her mouth to holler something back at me, then stopped, closed it, and looked at Shadow, who was sitting there on the floor with tears in her eyes.  
  
"Please don't fight with Mr. Rian, Miss Lina," Shadow sniffled. "It's not *nice*!"  
  
Lina's eyes widened until you could see the whites all around the red irises. "No!" she hollered. She looked around, picked the nearest pillar, and started banging her head against it. "No! No! No! No! No! What did I do to deserve *this*?"  
  
"Miss Lina?" a small voice ventured from the other side of the room. The dark-haired girl was still staring at us with enormous blue eyes.  
  
"What?" moaned Lina, her head still resting against the pillar.  
  
"Um..." said the girl. "What's going on?"  
  
"It's a long story, Amelia," Lina sighed. "Two long stories."  
  
This isn't the sort of statement it's easy to think of an answer to... Amelia certainly didn't have one. There was silence for a moment and then, very loud by comparison, we heard the jingle of a priest's staff.  
  
"Well, well, well," said a soft voice, as everybody turned to face the stairs. "What have we here?" 


	15. 14: Copies

Author's Note: This chapter might be a bit of a disappointment... it follows the anime pretty closely. I promise the remainder of the story won't just be adding extra characters to the anime, but this is how this one had to happen. The next one should be more interesting.  
  
Author's Note²: For whatever reason, Rian's much easier to draw than his 'nicely-stacked but otherwise useless sidekick'... but who am I to refuse my adoring fans? *snort* Here's Gloria, all dressed up and noplace to go. Somewhere, Gourry is crying humiliated tears, and Valune has a nosebleed.  
  
http://hammer.prohosting.com/~windcker/cindergloria.jpg  
  
---  
  
"It can't be..." breathed Zel as a towering figure descended the stairs. "It just *can't*..."  
  
The figure stepped into the light. It was a man, nearly seven feet tall and wearing a long red and white robe. He had purple hair that stuck far out on both sides of his head, and his eyes were closed, but not tightly... just as if he were sleeping and the slightest sound would wake him up.  
  
"The man from the portrait," gasped Amelia.  
  
Lina nodded. "The red priest."  
  
"Good evening," Rezo greeted us. "I've looked forward to your arrival, Lina Inverse... but I must say, I was only expecting *one* of you. Won't you introduce me to your companions?"  
  
Lina looked at me, then at Shadow, and her face turned nearly the same colour as her dumb pink outfit. "None of your business!" she snapped, quickly stepping in front of us. "Now who the hell are *you*?"  
  
"Well." Rezo smiled quietly. "I should think if your duplicates there are none of *my* business, then surely *my* identity is none of *yours*, either."  
  
Sometime during the past couple of minutes Gloria must've hopped down from that window... because now she came up to the rest of the group and poked the nearest person. "Hey," she said. "Who's the guy in the dress?"  
  
"Who?" asked Gourry. He looked at Rezo. "Him?"  
  
Gloria nodded. "I know I've seen him before..." She rubbed her lower lip. "I can't quite think where..."  
  
"I *think* it's Rezo the Red Priest," Gourry replied, "but to tell you the truth I really can't remember what he looked like."  
  
I smacked my forehead, and Lina shoved her hands up into her hair. "Do you both wanna shut *up*?" we asked in unison. "We don't have time for this now!"  
  
"Sorry!" they replied.  
  
We turned our attention back to Rezo. Only it couldn't be the *real* Rezo... Rezo was very definitely dead. Having your soul torn apart by the ultimate source of evil in the universe will do that to you. Which meant that *this* Rezo had to be... aw man, I was beginning to think some god was making fun of me.  
  
"It's not Rezo," I announced, "it's another copy!"  
  
"A fake?" asked Gourry.  
  
"Of *course* a fake," Lina told him.  
  
Zel nodded and drew his sword. "He can't be the real one."  
  
"Why can't he?" Gloria wanted to know.  
  
"Not possible," I told her. "He's a copy."  
  
"You sure?"  
  
"Absolutely," agreed Lina. "Definitely a fake!"  
  
"A copy," I corrected her.  
  
"Fake, copy, whatever," she shook her head.  
  
The Rezo copy, the woman in leather, and a curly-haired man in the single ugliest hat I'd ever seen were standing in a row at the bottom of the stairs, looking respectively amused, furious, and incredulous. We ignored them.  
  
"Wait a moment," protested the girl named Amelia. "What makes all of you so sure he must be a fake?"  
  
"A copy," I insisted.  
  
"He *has* to be a fake," said Lina, turning towards the Rezo copy. "Rezo the Red Priest is dead."  
  
"But how can you be so sure?" asked Amelia. "I thought nobody had heard from him in ten years."  
  
"Oh, he's dead all right," I said.  
  
"We killed him," Lina added.  
  
Amelia's huge blue eyes got even bigger. "What?" she asked. "You killed a great wise man!? Miss Lina, you people are... are... are..." she struggled for the right words.  
  
"Amazing?" Lina struck a pose.  
  
"I was going to say evil," replied Amelia.  
  
"I *beg* your pardon?" Lina demanded, grabbing the smaller girl (well, smaller heightwise) by the collar.  
  
"But... but..." Amelia looked around desperately for anything to change the subject to. "But what's going *on*, Miss Lina? Why are there three of you? And who's *that*?" She pointed at Zelgadiss. "He's creepy and scary-looking!"  
  
"He is not!" exclaimed Shadow, fastening herself to Zel's arm again. "He's noble and heroic and wrongly-done-by! It's what's in your heart that counts, isn't that right, Mr. Zelgadiss?"  
  
Zel shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead as if he was getting a terrific headache. Which between Shadow's whining and Amelia's wailing, I could entirely sympathize with.   
  
The Rezo copy cleared his throat.  
  
"I hate to interrupt," he said, "but before we all worry about whether I'm genuine or only a copy, isn't there another question we must ask ourselves first?"  
  
"Like what?" Lina asked.  
  
"Why, the question of whether you actually managed to kill me or not." The copy smiled smugly.  
  
"Oh, we killed you, all right," I told him.  
  
"No, *we* killed him," Lina said. "Meaning," she added, pointed at Rezo, "you are definitely a fake."  
  
"Copy!" I said for the umpteenth time.  
  
"Shut up!" Lina told me.  
  
"Then quit calling him a fake," I snarled. "He's a *copy*!"  
  
"I still don't see the bloody difference!"  
  
"There's a *big* difference!" I informed her. A fake was a *very* different thing than a copy.   
  
"Call it what you want," said Lina. "The *point* is that it's not Rezo. Rezo is dead."  
  
The copy of Rezo still looked more amused by all this than anything else. "I see," he said, without nodding. "Well, if you're positive I must be an imposter, then why don't we see what this imposter can do?" He held out his staff in front of him. The rings on it gave a little jingle that was somehow at once cheerful and ominous as he murmured the words of a spell. Shadow gave a little squeal and tried to hide under Zel's cape.  
  
Lina held up a hand. "Source of power..." she intoned. "Fireball!"  
  
The spell roared out of her hands and towards the man in red. He swung his staff... and the ball of fire evaporated.  
  
Zelgadiss clenched his teeth. "Take this!" he roared. "Goz Vu Rou!"  
  
Again the magic had no effect... the clone of Rezo dispelled it as easily as breathing.  
  
I did nothing. I'm not sure if this was smart or not... I didn't doubt he meant us no good, but it didn't seem likely I'd have any better luck than Lina or Zel had. Beyond that, though, I was just reluctant to try and hurt him, no matter what he had in mind for me. He was another copy...  
  
"Impossible!" Zel exclaimed, as his spell melted away into shreds.  
  
The Rezo clone smirked. "I see," he said. "Now if you're finished... it's my turn."  
  
"Look out!" I hollered as he swung his staff again. I barely had time to cast a barrier spell before a wave of magic, like orange electricity, smashed into it, very nearly throwing me backwards against the wall. I felt the barrier start to disintegrate, but then it was suddenly reinforced, first by Lina, then Zel, and then, to my surprise, Amelia and Shadow as well.  
  
The five of us together could hold it off easily... for now. We were spending a lot more effort in deflecting whatever it was Rezo was throwing at us than he was in casting it. Sooner or later, one or more of us would run out of steam, and if anyone dropped out, the other four might not be able to keep this up. I tried to think. It seemed like all we could do would be to run away, but that involve breaking our concentration and dropping the barrier, and then we'd be fried.  
  
"Damn!" Lina swore. "How can a fake be so powerful?"  
  
"I keep telling you!" I replied, shouting to be heard over the roar of magic. "He's a *copy*!"  
  
"Miss Lina!" Amelia exclaimed. Her face had gone awfully white. She was putting too much into the barrier all at once... we had maybe thirty seconds before we'd be down a magic-user, so that was how long we had to think of something.  
  
"Any bright ideas, people?" Lina asked.  
  
Suddenly, the room filled with white light, and the Rezo copy's attack melted into smoke, neutralized. One by one, we cautiously dropped the barrier and looked around.  
  
"That was a hell of a protection spell," I observed.  
  
"Who cast it?" Lina wanted to know.  
  
"Miss Sylphiel!" Amelia panted.  
  
I turned to look. 'Miss Sylphiel' turned out to be a tall girl with long straight hair and green eyes, dressed as a shrine maiden of some sort. "Are you all all right?" she asked anxiously. "I was worried, so I came looking for you... you're in trouble?"  
  
Lina grimaced. "Brilliant, Holmes!" she snarled.  
  
"That's awful! I just..." Sylphiel began, and was interrupted by Gloria.  
  
"Hey," Gloria said. "Don't I know you?"  
  
The shrine maiden did an impressive double-take. She looked at Gourry, standing behind Lina, then at Gloria, then back at Gourry again.  
  
"Yeah!" Gloria snapped her fingers. "I do! You're that good cook! What's your name again... Syl... Sylvia? No..."  
  
"Sylphiel," said Gourry.  
  
"Sylphiel!" Gloria smiled. "That's right!"  
  
Sylphiel turned a funny-looking colour, then her eyes rolled up and she toppled over to land face-up on the floor.  
  
"Sylphiel?" Gourry looked at the fallen girl and bent down to pat her cheek. "Is there something wrong? Hey, Sylphiel!"  
  
The Rezo copy chuckled to himself. "Shall we try that again, now that there will be no more interruptions?"  
  
"Oh, damn it all," growled Lina. "Come on, guys... Gourry, grab her, and let's run for it!"  
  
"Run away?" asked Amelia, as Gourry scooped up Sylphiel and slung her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.  
  
Zel made a face. "It's our only choice," he said grudgingly. "Let's go!"  
  
"This way!" Lina ordered, and the seven of us... Lina, Amelia, Zel, Shadow, Gloria, Gourry with Sylphiel, and me... ran like hell. 


	16. 15: Copies

Author's Note: Hooray! Fanfic.net is back! I was planning to write new bits for ALL of my chapter-by-chapter fics to be uploaded when it came back, but I contracted a major combined case of writer's block and post-anime blues (you know, that feeling you get after you've seen the last episode and you realize that there really is *no* *more*?), and ended up spending the week *reading* fanfiction instead of writing it. Dammit. But 'Lost Universe' was *awesome*.  
  
Author's Note²: Fanart! Anybody who can guess correctly what song I was listening to while I drew this gets a prize! http://hammer.prohosting.com/~windcker/number6.jpg  
  
Author's Note³: Guys, I think I may be running out of steam on this fic, although I do know how the rest of it goes... so here's the deal: reviews give me motivation. If this chapter brings the count up to 70 reviews or more, I'll write another one. Okay?   
  
---  
  
We found a hiding place in a falling-down old house on the edge of the city. I wouldn't want to guess how long it had been since anybody lived there... the roof was gone and all the windows were broken, and there was nothing much inside to sit on except for bare floor, but it was out of the wind and away from pissed-off Rezo copies. I gave it four stars.  
  
"Wow," said Amelia, a bit of explaination later. "So that's who you are, Mr. Zelgadiss."  
  
Shadow beamed and gave Zel another squeeze. "Told you!"  
  
"Yes," Zel said tiredly, "that's who I am. And you?" He looked first at Amelia, then at Sylphiel, who was still lying unconscious on the floor. Gourry had wandered off a while earlier to find something to wake her up, and now he returned with a big bucket of cold water, which he proceeded to dump over Sylphiel's head. She sat up, sputtering.  
  
"Better?" asked Gourry brightly.  
  
She blinked at him. "Gourry, dear!" she exclaimed, grabbing his arm. "Oh, thank goodness! I had the most horrible nightmare..."  
  
"Sylphiel," Gloria sat down on the other side of her. "Are you okay?"  
  
Sylphiel's green eyes widened and she shrank back against Gourry.  
  
"Sylphiel?" Gloria repeated.  
  
"Who are you?" Sylphiel asked. "Gourry, dear, what is going *on*?"  
  
The 'Gourry dears' were going to start making me feel sick in very short order. I looked at Lina and said, "I told Zel about it. This time it's *your* turn."  
  
Lina replied with the evil eye. "Maybe," she suggested, "we should get the *easy* introductions over with first. Sylphiel?"  
  
"Er..." Sylphiel looked around. "Well, I'm Sylphiel Nels Rada. I'm a shrine maiden here in Sairaag."  
  
"She's a friend of ours," added Gourry, putting a hand on one of Sylphiel's shoulders.  
  
Gloria patted her on the other. "She's a great cook!"  
  
Sylphiel looked rather green, but didn't say anything else.  
  
"Okay, then." Lina nodded and looked at the other new addition to the group. "Amelia, you go next."  
  
"Um," Amelia licked her lips nervously. "Well, my name is Amelia wil Tesla Saillune. I..."  
  
"Saillune?" My mouth fell open as I took a second look. "Wait a minute, here," I said. "This is *Princess* Amelia of Saillune?" The Saillunese royal family was dark-haired and both the men and women tended to be impressively built. Amelia certainly fit that description.  
  
"Ye-es..." Amelia said slowly, still looking at me as if she thought I was going to bite her.  
  
I wasn't... but I was tempted to do something awful to Lina. "What gives?" I demanded. "This isn't fair... how come *you* get to travel with a big-busted princess and I'm stuck with these two?" I pointed at Shadow and Gloria.  
  
"Mr. Rian, that's not very nice," said Shadow, pouting. "You shouldn't judge a woman by the size of her breasts!"  
  
"Nobody asked *you*!" snapped Lina.  
  
The Princess herself just turned very, very pink and tried to look natural as she folded her arms across her chest. "Miss Lina," she said, "just how many of you *are* there?"  
  
Lina made a terrible face. "*One*," she said. "Those," she jabbed a finger in my direction, "are copies."  
  
"You mean like Vrumegon?" asked Amelia.  
  
"Right," said Lina. And that seemed to be all the explaination she was willing to provide.  
  
"It's an honour to meet you, your highness," Shadow said brightly, standing up to bob Amelia a curtsy. "I'm Shadow Lina... and I'm really sorry about Mr. Rian, he's always that way."  
  
Amelia nodded mutely and looked at me. "Mr. Rian?"  
  
"That's me," I agreed, and somehow could nor resist adding, "the handsome and charming sorcerer, Rian Inverse."  
  
Princess Amelia edged away from me.  
  
"Right, right," Lina stood up and cleared her throat. "Now that we've got that all done with," she said, "let's talk about Rezo. Any ideas why he's got a copy of himself hanging around?"  
  
Gourry shook his head. "Nope.... but why do you think he just let us escape like that?"  
  
"He could have killed us if he wanted," Gloria agreed.  
  
"Are you absolutely *sure* he's a copy?" Amelia wanted to know.  
  
"Positive," Lina and I both answered at once.  
  
Sylphiel thought for a moment, then clapped her hands. "I know!" she exclaimed. "Maybe you killed the copy instead!"  
  
"There's no way," Lina said, shaking her head. "It *had* to be Rezo... unless his copy *also* had a Dark Lord sealed inside him." She turned her head. "Zel, you're the one who knew Rezo. Did you know anything about this?"  
  
Zel shook his head. "I didn't. But Rezo was interested in a great many fields of magic. It's not impossible that a shadow reflector or some other method of copying people may have been available to him. I can't see him using it, though. He wouldn't have wanted a copy of himself suffering blindness as he did."  
  
Something about the way he said that made me shiver. For a moment I felt like I wanted to say something, but I couldn't really think of anything to add, so I didn't. I was starting to feel weirdly far away from this conversation, though... as if I were listening to people I didn't know talking about something I couldn't care less about.  
  
"So you think it's a copy somebody *else* made of him?" Lina wanted to know.  
  
"Or maybe just a plain imposter," Zel agreed. "Though if he is, he's certainly a powerful imposter."  
  
"Well..." Lina looked at me. "We know that a copy can have the same skills as the original..."  
  
"If it's a shadow reflector copy," Zel said, "but I doubt you could make one without the original's knowledge."  
  
"But reflectors aren't the only way to copy people," Lina said. "You can also use the same type of magic that they use for making chimaeras. If you've got a sample of a person's blood, you can copy them as many times as you want. That's supposed to be less effective, though."  
  
That left me momentarily tempted to stand up and shout at them. Did they have to keep saying 'copy' as if it were some kind of a *thing*? But I had a weird feeling that if I said anything, they wouldn't be able to hear it.  
  
Lina chewed on her lower lip and thought for a moment. "This isn't my area," she said. "If we want to find out what we might be dealing with, we're going to have to ask an expert."  
  
Zel stood up. "I've got some other things to look into in the mean time," he told us, brushing dust off his trousers. "I'll meet you all back here at noon." This being Zelgadiss, he didn't say goodbye... he just turned and walked out of the old house.  
  
"Hey!" Shadow bounced to her feet. "Mr. Zelgadiss! Wait for me!" She ran after him. "I'm coming with you!" She, too, vanished out the door, leaving the rest of us in silence.  
  
It was broken by Princess Amelia. "Um... Miss Lina?" she said. "Who are we going to ask about copies?"  
  
"The Sairaag Sorcerer's Guild, of course," Lina replied proudly. "They've got a branch that specializes in chimaeras." She got up and adjusted her cape. "Is everybody coming?"  
  
Gloria tapped me on the shoulder as she got up. "Rian?" she asked. "Are you coming with us?"  
  
"I guess," I said grudgingly.  
  
"All right!" proclaimed Lina. "Sylphiel... show us the way!"  
  
***  
  
Sorcerers tend to like to design their own guild halls... I suppose it's a matter of professional pride or something, but if that's so, then I think they're taking pride in the wrong profession. Personally, I'd prefer to just hire an architect. Maybe it would make the building less personal, but it also wouldn't need haphazard beams and precarious spells to keep the upper levels from falling down.  
  
"This isn't visiting hours!" a slot in the front door protested as we climbed the steps.  
  
Lina completely ignored him. "Is this the place that does chimaeras?" she asked.  
  
"Yes," the doorman replied, "but like I said, outsiders are only allowed in from noon to five." The slot closed with a thunk.  
  
"Here it comes," sighed Gourry.  
  
"FIREBALL!" Lina hollered. The door went up in smoke and splinters, which cleared a moment later to revealed the singed doorman. His eyes were very white against his sooty skin as Lina walked towards him. "Go and find the guy in charge," she ordered, "and tell him that Lina Inverse is here!"  
  
The doorman's eyes got wider. "L-l-l-lina Inverse?" he stammered.  
  
"That's me!" Lina gave him a fang-toothed grin.  
  
"I'll be right back!" said the doorman, and ran off faster than you'd think would be safe for somebody who'd just had his eyebrows burnt off.  
  
"Hey, Rian," said Gloria, as we sat down to wait. "You're awful quiet."  
  
I shrugged.  
  
"Leave him alone," Lina said, dismissing me with a wave of her hand. "If he wants to keep his mouth shut, that's just fine with me."  
  
That did it. All of a sudden, I just couldn't take any more. "Would you *stop* that?" I demanded, standing up.  
  
Gloria and Gourry both winced, and Amelia tried to hide behind Sylphiel.  
  
"Stop what?" asked Lina.  
  
"*That*!" I said. "Stop talking about me as if I'm not here!"  
  
"When was I doing that?" she wanted to know.  
  
"Just now," I informed her, "and that whole time we were back in that empty house."  
  
"What are you talking about?" Lina asked, getting over her confusion and starting to be angry instead. "I didn't even *mention* you in there!"  
  
"You were talking about copies," I said. "Like I wasn't even there!"  
  
She rolled her eyes. "Boy, are you touchy! We happen to be having a little *problem* with copies right now, in case you hadn't noticed."  
  
"You're doing it again!"  
  
"Do you want to shut up?" Lina asked.  
  
"Why should I shut up?" I snarled. "I was just telling *you* to shut up."  
  
"Why, I oughtta..." Lina pushed up her sleeves.  
  
"Stop!" Gloria and Gourry both shouted. Gourry grabbed Lina's arms and Gloria got a hold of me.  
  
"You can't blow up the sorcerer's guild before we find out about copies!" Gourry told Lina.  
  
"Don't hit girls, remember?" Gloria reminded me.  
  
"STAY OUT OF IT!" Lina and I hollered in unison.  
  
Behind me, a door suddenly banged open. "What is going *on* up here?" a young sorcerer asked, stomping into the room. "Didn't the doorman tell you that visitors are..."  
  
Lina shoved Gourry off of her and walked past me. "Good morning, mister," she said cheerfully to the sorcerer. "I'm Lina Inverse. My friends here and I want to ask you about copies." 


	17. 16: And More Copies

Author's Note: Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry I took so long to update. I've been having a quarter-life crisis on top of a severe case of vector calculus homework. It's hard to have deep conversations with your muses when your brain is overflowing with integrals and Gaussian surfaces.  
  
---  
  
"No, wait!" our guide protested as Lina made for the laboratory door. He dashed in front of it and spread his arms and legs out to keep anybody from passing. "You can't go in there!"  
  
"Why not?" she asked innocently. "You let people in to study, don't you? That's all we want is some answers!"  
  
Big beads of sweat welled up on the sorcerer's brow... as well they might; half a second later he went flying and the door with him as Lina let loose another fireball. Door and sorcerer went bouncing down a long flight of stairs, the former breaking into pieces at the bottom and the latter fortunately only dazed. As he picked himself up, and older man with a blue robe and a bushy white beard came stamping up.  
  
"What is going on in here?" the sorcerer in blue demanded. "Visitors are only allowed on Thursdays and Saturdays, and not at all when they come in and try to destroy the place, you uncivilized hoodlums!"  
  
"Oh, that's just her," said Gourry, patting Lina on one shoulder. "Really, that's just her."  
  
Our guide scrambled to his feet and held up both hands, although I don't know whether he wanted to defend himself from us or from his superior. "Um, no," he said quickly, "don't throw them out... they... uh... they want to give us a big donation and study here!"  
  
"Oh?" The sorcerer in blue appeared skeptical. He frowned and looked us over, taking in Lina's enormous gold earrings, the star sapphire talismans on Amelia's cloak and bracelets, and the red gems in the hilt of my sword. "Oh!" he said, dollar signs lighting up in his eyes. "Well, then! What would you like to know?"  
  
The two sorcerers gave us a full complementary tour of their laboratory, a big underground room full of vats and vials. One long row of huge glass cylinders was full of a thick pink liquid, with the tiny curled shape of a fetus floating in each. I decided I was glad Shadow hadn't come with us. She would have spent the whole time clinging to me like a leech and whining about how creepy and icky this place was.  
  
'Creepy and icky' actually did a pretty good job of describing it. I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for those unformed creatures in the tanks. Hopefully, they weren't human, the poor suckers.  
  
"So how much of the original's power can a copy have?" Lina wanted to know.  
  
"All of it," the sorcerer in blue boasted.  
  
"Really?" asked Lina.  
  
"Well..." the sorcerer made a bit of a face. "We'd like to say so."  
  
"Which is it then?" Lina persisted.  
  
"A copy can have all the *physical* abilities of the original," the sorcerer told her. "Strength, speed, reflexes, etcetera. Follow me. The machine is just in here."  
  
'The machine' was a huge conglomeration of tanks and tubes, big enough to have an entire room to itself. As far as stability of construction was concerned, it looked a lot like the guild hall; rickety and top-heavy. The younger sorcerer stepped forward and pointed proudly to the contraption.  
  
"This is our newest copy cultivator!" he said. "It can copy anybody, including their memories and experiences! Give us a few more months, and this method will be superior to shadow reflectors!"  
  
I didn't need to hear that.  
  
"Anybody?" Lina asked.  
  
"Well, we don't have any extraordinary people around," the older sorcerer said quickly, giving his apprentice an angry glare for the brash statement. "Like, oh, say, an expert swordsman. We don't know how many of those special skills we can actually duplicate."  
  
"So why don't you experiment?"  
  
"Expert swordsmen don't grow on trees, you know," the sorcerer shook his head. "What are we going to use for samples?"  
  
Lina had an immediate answer for that. "You can use us as samples!"  
  
"No, he can't!" I protested.  
  
"Sure, he can!" Lina said. She stepped aside and gestured grandly. "Take Gourry here, for example. I know he looks like a big blonde gorilla, but he's an expert swordsman!"  
  
"That's right!" Amelia agreed.  
  
"Oh, really?" the two sorcerers asked in unison.  
  
"No!" I shoved Gloria out of the way and grabbed Lina's arm. "Forget it," I told the sorcerers. "We're not 'samples.'"  
  
"Don't listen to him," Lina said. "He's got some copy issues going on." She yanked her wrist out of my hand and smiled. "So... you'll need a bucket of Gourry's blood as a sample, right?"  
  
Gourry turned very pale.  
  
"Oh, no," the sorcerer in blue said, delighted. "A lock of hair will do!"  
  
"Not a problem!" Lina swiped a pair of scissors off a nearby table and pounced on Gourry.  
  
"Stop!" Gourry shouted. "I refuse! Help!"  
  
"Get off him!" I ordered, pulling on Lina's cape. "Didn't you hear him? He doesn't want to be copied!"  
  
"Leggo!" she tried to kick me in the face.  
  
"Sylphiel!" Gourry called. "Sylphiel, please stop them!"  
  
"Okay!" Sylphiel reached out, got a handful of Gourry's hair, and pulled it out by the roots. "Won't it be wonderful to have more of you around?" she beamed, as Gourry yelped in pain and rubbed his newly-acquired bald spot.  
  
Lina shoved me onto the floor. "I don't know about *that*," she told Sylphiel, "but you got the hair! Let her rip!"  
  
The younger sorcerer dropped the hair into a vat, and the machine started making a humming sound that quickly built in volume until the glass vials began to rattle in their brackets. "How long does it take?" Lina wanted to know.  
  
"A day and a night," the sorcerer in blue replied.  
  
"We don't have that long." Lina pushed past the two men and started fiddling with the levers and buttons on the machine.  
  
"Hey, stop!" exclaimed one of them. "Don't do that!"  
  
"Relax!" Lina told him. "I'm just adding more growth culture!"  
  
Gourry had picked himself up by now, and while Lina messed with the controls, he reached stealthily for the back of her head.  
  
"Stop!" I tackled him, but was too late; he'd already pulled out a lock of Lina's hair. "Give that here!" I shouted, trying to strangle him into submission.  
  
"Here!" Gourry held the hair out to the sorcerers. "She's a sorcery genius!"  
  
"She is!" Amelia agreed brightly.  
  
"No!" I hollered.  
  
Nobody was listening to me. The sorcerers took the hair and put it in their machine, then protested Amelia's adding extra growth culture once again while Lina and Gourry argued over who had the right to do what to who. I was about ready to pull my own hair out. This was a nightmare! What the hell did Lina think gave her the right to make more copies of herself? Did she think this was some kind of a joke?  
  
"They're finished!" the older sorcerer announced, as the machine's huge engines began to slow from a roar to a quiet hum. Smoke billowed off of various bits and pieces of it, and slowly two tall metal doors began to open.  
  
That did it. I couldn't watch this. If I had to look yet *another* copy in the face, I was going to go right off the deep end. I turned my back on the whole mess and started up the stairs. "Come on, Gloria," I said. "We're leaving."  
  
"But what about..." she began.  
  
"Screw it!" I snapped. "*I'm* leaving! You coming, or not?"  
  
She suffered a moment's indecision, then followed me up the steps. "Where are we going?"  
  
"Nowhere," I said, then remembered the response that had gotten last time. "Anywhere! I don't care! Away. We're going away." I climbed through the remains of the door at the top of the stairs. Behind me, I could hear the sound of a lot of little voices yammering at each other, but I refused to actually listen to what they were saying.  
  
"But we haven't even found out what this Eris woman wants yet," Gloria pointed out. "Isn't that why we came here in the first place?"  
  
"I don't give a bat's butt what she wants," I informed her. "Anyway, it's the originals she's after, not us lowly copies. We're not involved in this, it's not our problem, and we're going!" 


	18. 17: Curiouser and Curiouser

Author's Note: Yeah, I know. The last chapter sucked. Sorry, but it was something I had to get out of the way, so that this chapter could go onto the interesting stuff.  
  
---  
  
Maybe five minutes down the road, Gloria suddenly asked, "what about Shadow?"  
  
I'd forgotten about Shadow, and now that I remembered, I really wished I could forget again. "Leave Shadow," I snarled.  
  
"Just leave her?" echoed Gloria.  
  
"Yes," I said through my teeth. "Just leave her."  
  
"But Rian," she said, "that's not a very nice way to treat a girl."  
  
"So since when am I chivalrous?" I retorted. "You're   
always telling me I'm not nice to ladies! What makes you think I'm going to suddenly start now?" I hoped she'd take the hint and just shut up already. I wanted nothing better right now than to forget that Shadow – and Lina, too – ever existed! Let the Rezo copy have them. Why should I care? Oh, Shadow would probably whine and wail about how she'd trusted us and thought we were her best friends,   
but...  
  
Gloria got several steps ahead before she realized that I wasn't beside her anymore, and turned around to see where I'd gone. "Rian?" she asked me. "Why'd you stop walking?"  
  
I clenched my fists, took a deep breath, and held it until I no longer felt an irresistible urge to destroy something. When I thought I could do so without exploding, I looked around. Three roads met not far in front of us; there was the one we were on now, leading from the Sorcerer's Guild. There was the one we'd arrived on with Zelgadiss, which would take us back to Samboa, and there was the one we'd come by that morning, which we could now follow to Sairaag. I sighed heavily, and turned towards the city. "Come on."  
  
"But you just said we weren't going back for Shadow," Gloria protested.  
  
"We aren't," I replied. "I just want to know what Zel's up to. It's not our problem," I added quickly, "but whatever he's looking into, if it's got to do with Rezo, there's probably some pretty cool magic or even some treasure involved."  
  
Who was I fooling? But at least Gloria would be satisfied with that. As for Shadow... if she was still with Zel – which I doubted; he'd have gotten sick of her clinging to him way before now – and if she wanted to come with us – why would she? She was always complaining we were never nice to her – then fine. We'd put up with her until we found an orphanage to dump her at or a farm that needed a new milkmaid or something. Either way, we would finally and permanently be rid of her.  
  
"Are you coming, Gloria?" I asked.  
  
She nodded and started catching up with me. Behind us, the Sorcerer's Guild suddenly blew up. I can't say I was a bit surprised.  
  
I didn't know what it was Zel had set out to do his 'looking into' on, but whatever it was, it must obviously have to do with the copy of Rezo. Furthermore, since Zel appeared to be pretty familiar with the ins and outs of the place, and since it did seem to be the base of operations for these people, Rezo's mansion looked like the best spot to go if we were looking for him. I hadn't gotten much of a look at the outside of the place last night – when you're running for your life, you don't stop to admire the scenery – but by daylight it appeared deceptively tranquil. In fact, it looked downright uninhabited, even abandoned. The gardens were overgrown and there were shingles missing from the roof. It looked a little spooky, but in an interesting way, not a frightening one.  
  
Compounding the impression of desertion was the fact that there was no sign of anybody in the place. After Zel took us the long and winding secret route last night, I'd been sort of expecting there to be guards or something, but there wasn't a soul. This Eris must be awfully confident... I found myself wondering whether the doors were even locked.  
  
As it turned out, they were, but that wasn't much of a problem. I just had Gloria carve a chunk out of one wall with the Sword of Light.  
  
We climbed through into a hallway and discovered that somebody else – possibly Lina and Gourry, I thought – had apparently had the same idea before us; there was a matching circle cut out of the wall at the far end. Inside, the house was considerably creepier than out; everything was dusty and cobwebby, and heavy red velvet curtains on the windows blocked out most of the sunlight and lent an ominous ruddy tone to what could get through. The thick fabric also made the place eerily silent; I felt an urge to cough, just for the sake of making a noise.  
  
"Which way?" Gloria asked, looking at the row of polished wooden doors in the opposite wall.  
  
I thought for a moment, then picked a direction at random. "That way." Zelgadiss or no Zelgadiss, there had to be something interesting in a place like this.  
  
We wandered through the house for a while without seeing anybody – or anything. Many of the room were empty. Others were full of furniture covered in white dust cloth. It got harder and harder to believe that anyone actually lived here... in fact, I thought suddenly, probably nobody did. Instead, this house was just a front, something to make their presence look a bit more legitimate, while Eris and the Rezo copy were actually staying elsewhere.  
  
It had already been obvious that this mess was way more complicated than just Lina and Gourry being wanted for murder. Now I wondered just how *much* more complicated. Who was this Eris woman really, what did she want, and what did it have to do with us? Who was the original Vrumegon, or was he already dead? And why – and how – had Eris made a copy of Rezo.  
  
At about that point in my thoughts, we came to a landing from which two flights of stairs led down in opposite directions. I frowned and looked one way, then the other; the two looked identical, and both descended into murky darkness after a very short distance.  
  
Gloria waited patiently for me to pick a direction.  
  
I sort of doubted we'd find anything whichever staircase we took; this entire house was deserted. But I couldn't resist the urge to explore one or the other. I paused a moment, then let the light spell I'd been using flicker out and took another look. At first I could see nothing but red-tinted blackness, but then my eyes adjusted and I made out a faint glow at the bottom of one of the flights. There was someone home after all!  
  
"Down here," I said.  
  
The stairs went down a flight to yet another hallway full of doors, the sixth or seventh one we'd been through (I'd lost count), but in this one, the fifth door was ajar, and light was leaking out. I opened it a bit, and found another staircase, this one narrow and leading steeply down. Another secret passageway! Now we were getting somewhere!  
  
We made our way as quietly as possible down the steps, which descended for quite a ways before opening suddenly onto a huge underground room, the size of a cathedral. Gloria and I shrank back into the doorway to look out without being seen; the room was two storeys tall, the size of a cathedral, and utterly bare; no carpets, no curtains, no nothing. The only piece of furniture in the place was some kind of odd-looking throne, in which was sitting the copy of Rezo. I couldn't tell for certain, but he looked as though he were asleep, and not peacefully; his head and limbs were jerking as if from unpleasant dreams.  
  
Eris and the man in the ugly hat were standing and watching him.  
  
The man in the hat brushed his thick dark hair over his shoulder and snorted. "Doesn't take much to wear him out, does it?" he asked, every word echoing in that huge space. "Ten minutes of magic, and he's useless. This is your beloved Red Priest, eh?"  
  
"You weren't hired for your opinions, Zangulus," Eris snarled. "Now get out of here."  
  
"As my lady wishes," Zangulus replied, his voice caked with sarcasm. He bowed, then turned and left the room through an arched doorway in the far wall. Eris paused to look back at the copy of Rezo, then followed him out, vanishing into the shadows in the hallway beyond.  
  
I waited a moment to be sure they were really gone, then motioned for Gloria to follow me and tiptoed out into the room. I didn't want to dare make a noise for fear Eris and Zangulus would hear the echoes. The throne was bigger than it had looked from our hiding place, reaching all the way to the ceiling, twisting and gnarled like the trunk of a tree. It was built of rounded, organic shapes. I couldn't tell what it was made of, but it looked slightly repulsive... and it seemed to be full of eyes.  
  
A moment later, I realized that it *was* full of eyes. It wasn't a just a chair, it was a chimaera.  
  
"What do you think that's for?" Gloria whispered.  
  
"I don't know," I replied. The copy of Rezo had stopped twitching now and was sitting quite still. Was he just asleep, I wondered, or actually unconscious? I took a few steps towards the throne, and looked up into his face.  
  
"Is he dead?" asked Gloria.  
  
"I don't think..." I began, but stopped short in horror as HE OPENED HIS EYES.  
  
I took an involuntary step backwards and only barely stopped myself from yelping with surprise. The Rezo copy had really freaky eyes; one looked pretty normal except for being much more intensely green than any real person's eyes ever got, but the other was gold, and the pupil was a vertical ellipse, like a cat's... or a mazoku's. Forget a copy... this man was some kind of a monster!  
  
He smiled faintly at me. "Well, hello there, young man," he said.  
  
I thought about fireballing him right then and there, but Eris would hear that, and I'd already seen how useful spells were against this guy anyway. He didn't look terribly threatening, cocooned in that chimaera throne, but I didn't want to underestimate him a second time.  
  
"What brings you here?" he inquired politely.  
  
I swallowed. "Who are you?"  
  
"Who are *you*?" he returned.  
  
"You first," I said.  
  
He paused a moment. "I am Rezo, the Red Priest," he told me. A few seconds went by in silence, then he added, "and you?"  
  
"Well," I said, then shrugged one shoulder and managed to smile back, though I didn't mean it any more than he did. "If you're Rezo the Red Priest, I guess that makes me Lina Inverse." 


	19. 18: Copies Helping Copies

Author's Note: Woohoo! Guess who's back? It's reading week at university (my sister is muchly ashamed of me because unlike everybody else's big bothers and sisters, who are out drinking, I'm actually spending reading week reading), and it's taken me the *whole* *darn* *week* to get my writing groove back. Now I have to go back to school on Monday, and my muses will probably go back on strike while Vector Calculus reclaims my brain. Darnit.  
  
Author's Note²: Anybody here who's going to be at ACen this year? I hope to. I've been working on my costume and it's beeeeee-yutiful! ^_^  
  
---  
  
The Rezo copy chuckled. It wasn't, as chuckles go, a particularly menacing one. I'd heard way worse, ranging from Lagen's straight-out classic maniacal laughter, to Zolf's revenge-crazed giggles, all the way to one weirdo who couldn't seem to *do* an evil laugh without nearly choking himself. Unlike them, this guy wasn't trying to sound particularly nasty or insane. He was just amused. But somehow, his quiet little chuckle made my skin want to crawl.  
  
"I see," he said. "I wonder, Master Inverse, whether you might be persuaded to do me a favour."  
  
"That depends on the favour," I replied warily.  
  
"Remove the circlet around my forehead," he said, "and you will find a red gem underneath it. Remove that, as well, and destroy it."  
  
"And why would I do that?" I wanted to know.  
  
"The crystal is what keeps me under Eris' control," the copy explained. "At the moment, she is asleep, but as long as the crystal is present, I cannot leave this chair without her permission. Miss Eris," he added, "takes no chances that her creations might have the opportunity to be anything except for her prisoners and slaves."  
  
"Okay," I said carefully, "but you didn't answer my question. What I asked was why would *I* want to help you?"  
  
I'm not sure why I was being so obtuse. Maybe I just wanted to see if I could provoke him. If that was it, it wasn't working; his quiet smile, as if he were enjoying some kind of joke at the rest of the world's expense, didn't even flicker.  
  
"Ah, you mean you wish to know what's in it for you," he said. "To which I'm afraid I must say: nothing. If you leave without assisting me, you may retrace your steps and leave this place, unharmed. When Eris wakes, she will know what my thoughts have been in her absence, and know that you have been here, but by that time you may well be beyond her reach. I have no wealth or information to offer you by way of reward, either. Nothing in this house belongs to me. I am, after all, nothing but a copy."  
  
Nothing but a copy. Just like me. It was painfully obvious that he was trying to manipulate me, but it was also working, or at the very least, making me curious what he was really after. "How do I know you won't kill me afterwards?" I asked.  
  
"What would I gain by doing that?" he wanted to know. "Who in his right mind harms those who help him?"  
  
"Rezo," I replied immediately.  
  
"Rezo was emphatically *not* in his right mind," said the copy. "And it was the doing of such things that brought about his downfall. He may well have succeeded in what he tried to do, had he not been unable to resist a cruel joke on his grandson, who until then had loved him dearly." He looked sad, and the cynical bastard in me thought he was a very good actor. "I do not wish to repeat Rezo's mistakes, or else what is the point of my being able to remember them? Please help me. There is no one else who will. Why should anyone find a mere copy worthy of their pity, or their aid?  
  
I hesitated, swallowed, and then started up the steps towards him.  
  
"Rian!" Gloria caught my arm. "I don't know if that's a good idea."  
  
"Yeah? Well you don't know *anything*," I snarled, pulling out of her grip. "You'd forget your own name if I didn't remind you by hollering it at you when you do something dumb!"  
  
"But we don't know if we can trust him," she said.  
  
"I give you my word," said the copy. "Neither of you shall come to any harm by my hand."  
  
"Get out of the way, Gloria," I said.  
  
I ascended the steps and, half afraid he was going to grab me or even bite me, I undid the silver circlet's catch and removed it from the copy's head. Underneath, there was indeed a red gem. The cynic spoke up again to wonder if it was a ruby or just a spinel.  
  
I'd expected something that looked like the crystals the Vrumegons had in their foreheads; a big cut stone, implanted right into the flesh so that it looked like it would be impossible to take it out without hurting the bearer. This, however, was just a little gem, about the size of my thumbnail, with a smooth face, and it was just sitting there, stuck to his skin the way a spoon can stick to your nose. I barely touched it and it fell, landing on the stone floor with a quiet 'click.'  
  
Immediately, the fleshy tendrils of the chimaera throne retracted, rustling as they separated themselves from the copy's flesh. He stood up, tearing himself away from the last few by force, looked around until he spotted where the stone had fallen, and then stamped on it. I'm pretty sure that if I'd tried that, the gem would have just skidded out from under by foot and I'd have fallen on my backside... but the Rezo copy quietly and without any more obvious effort than most people would put into squishing a bug, ground it into the rock. When he lifted his foot, there was nothing left but a smudge of pinkish dust.  
  
He then turned to the chair and gestured, and although he didn't say a word, the thing burst into blue flames. Some unseen mouth let out an unearthly shriek of pain that dwindled to a whimper as it burned, and in minutes there was nothing left but a charred and crumbling skeleton.  
  
I backed up until I bumped into Gloria, who had her hand on the hilt of her sword. We were going to be next. I just knew it.  
  
But when the copy turned around, he smiled at me. "Thank you," he said.  
  
"Er... you're welcome," I replied.  
  
"Come," he motioned for us to follow him. "Let us go upstairs, where I might entertain my guests properly."  
  
He took a different route out of the big room than Gloria and I had to get into it, and it brought us up to a part of the mansion we hadn't seen yet, unless we'd passed through it last night without paying attention. This place looked a bit more lived-in; there was less dust, and the furniture didn't have sheets over it, although the big, fancy place that should have been crawling with servants was still eerily empty. Perhaps Eris and her friend with the stupid hat were staying in this section.  
  
The Rezo copy led us into a large drawing room with so many paintings that you could barely see the wallpaper, and seated himself in a huge leather armchair.  
  
"Please," he said. "Sit."  
  
Gloria and I sat down on a sofa, opposite from him. Neither of us said anything.  
  
"A game of chess, Master Inverse?" he suggested, indicating the coffee table in front of him. A chessboard was built into its surface, in black and white squares of inlaid stone.  
  
"No, thanks," I said. "I'm not very good at chess."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
I shook my head. "I'm not much of a 'strategy' person. I just sort of make things up as I go along."  
  
"I'm told that works for some people," the copy said.  
  
I shrugged. "In real life, yeah, but not so well with chess."  
  
"Perhaps not," he agreed. "The rules of life tend to be a bit more flexible."  
  
"What do you want?" I asked. I felt like I was already playing chess with him, and losing badly.  
  
"What do *you* want?" he countered.  
  
"Uh-uh," I said. "You first."  
  
"But I went first the last time," he pointed out, "when you asked me who I was. I think it's your turn now."  
  
"Well, you're out of luck," I told him. "I've got no idea what I want. And it's no use asking Gloria. I don't think she wants *anything*."  
  
The copy nodded sagely. "Very few people know what they really want, and I suspect that even fewer care enough to go after it. But I think *I* might know what you want."  
  
"Really," I said.  
  
"You want the same thing I want," he replied. "You want to be yourself... not someone else's shadow."  
  
That hit home, and hurt. He was right, exactly right. I wanted to be the original, and failing that, I at least wanted to have something Lina didn't. I wanted something, physical or not, that I could point to and say, "that's mine. That's what makes me Rian and not Lina." Body parts didn't count.  
  
The copy knew he had me. He was smiling. "Perhaps," he said, "we can continue to help each other."  
  
I leaned forward in my seat. "I'm listening." 


	20. 19: The Measure of a Copy

Author's Note: I LIIIIIIVE! I was going through my ff.net stuff last night and noticed that this story had been on hiatus for an entire year. Time to do something about that, methinks.  
  
---  
  
The copy sat back, pressing the tips of his fingers together and meeting my eyes without blinking – something not a lot of people can do. Somebody who didn't know who or what his was might have thought his pose made him look old and wise... but I, personally, was getting the impression that no matter how collected he sounded, there was something seriously unhinged in this guy's head. Not that I could exactly blame him.  
  
"I have," he said, "and I am sure you have as well, had a very long time to think about what I am and what it means. What is a copy, after all? It is an imitation, a caricature that is by its very nature inferior to the original, even if its only flaw lies in not *being* the original."  
  
"I'm as good as Lina," I said defensively, but his point held, and we both knew it.  
  
"I'm sure," he agreed, "but you are *not* Lina, and will never *be* Lina, just as I am not and can never be Rezo. Though I may have all of his aptitudes and skills, I cannot separate myself from him. A copy is defined only in terms of the original after which it was created, and the rest of the world cannot think of such a being in any other terms. But I'm sure you're aware of this."  
  
"Yeah, I'd noticed," I replied. Even those who'd been aware I wasn't Lina, such as Eris, had been concerned only by the fact that I looked like her. "So you think you can do something about it?"  
  
Gloria shifted in her seat. "Rian," she said, "I think..."  
  
I glared at her. "You do? Since when?"  
  
"Rian," she persisted, "I..."  
  
"Shut up," I told her, and looked back at the Rezo copy. "You were saying?"  
  
He smiled quietly. "Yes, I do think I can do something about it. I think we both can."  
  
I waited a moment. "Yes?"  
  
The copy took a deep breath and looked at his steepled fingers, and I realized that he'd probably been rehearsing this speech in his head for a long time. "My first idea," he explained, "was that perhaps, should I somehow be able to free myself from Eris, I could prove my worth as a separate being through deeds. But really, what could I do that would divorce me from the original Red Priest? The answer, of course, is nothing. He has already done great good and great evil. There is little room left for me to leave my own mark. I don't doubt you have the same problem. Lina Inverse is famous for being able to destroy three things in the process of saving the fourth."  
  
He had *definitely* practiced this. He couldn't have known he'd get me as a target for it, but he was choosing his words very carefully, to make the maximum impression out of his sorry plight. I'd have resented the attempt to manipulate me... if I hadn't known very well that everything he was saying was true.  
  
"Are you gonna get to the point?" I asked.  
  
"I am."  
  
He shut his eyes a moment as he thought, or maybe just pretended to think, about what to say next. I couldn't tell if this made him more scary or less... I no longer had to look into those creepy mismatched eyes of his, but it emphasized his resemblance to Rezo. seeing that while knowing that he was *not* Rezo was a bit worrying. Did people who knew Lina react to seeing *me* like that? A stupid question, I realized... of course they did. I'd seen how Zelgadiss, Sylphiel and Princess Amelia had responded to Gloria and myself.  
  
"I cannot distinguish myself from Rezo by doing things he could have done," said the copy. "So instead, I must do something he could not. I must surpass him. And," here the green eye opened again and its eyebrow arched as it looked me over, "there is only one thing Rezo the Red Priest ever failed to do."  
  
Clearly, it was supposed to be my job to say what that was, but I couldn't think of it. He wasn't talking about taking on Shabrinigdo, was he?  
  
"He couldn't see?" Gloria offered.  
  
I winced – I always hate it when she's right. But when I looked back at the copy, he was shaking his head.  
  
"He saw," he said. "Only for a brief moment before the Dark Lord consumed him, true, but he did see. No, the thing he could not do was to survive Lina Inverse's special spell. He could not resist the Giga Slave."  
  
Oh, yeah. This guy had flipped.  
  
"*Nothing* could do that," I protested. "That's sort of the point of the spell. Have you seen... I mean, had Rezo seen the bay where... where Lina tested it? Go and take a look sometime. That was over a year ago and there's still nothing there. Birds won't even fly over it."  
  
This did not appear to worry him. "A sufficiently powerful sorcerer could deflect it," he said calmly.  
  
Deflect it? The Giga Slave was difficult enough to control without the intended target trying to mess with it! I had no idea what extra input might do to the already unstable spell, and I didn't want to be there when somebody found out! It occurred to me for a moment that possibly Rezo *was* powerful enough to have dispelled it if he'd wanted, and had chosen not to, but that didn't seem like a good thing to bring up here. "Is that what you want me to do?" I asked. "You want me to cast the Giga Slave, and you see if you can block it?"   
  
He nodded.  
  
I opened my mouth, couldn't decide what to say, and shut it again. This man was stark, staring mad. He was practically asking me to murder him. I looked at Gloria, but she of course couldn't offer any help.  
  
"Not right at this moment, of course," the copy added reassuringly. "There are a few things I shall have to do in order to prepare myself first, but that is the correct general idea. Should I survive, in return I will help you to do something Lina Inverse has failed at."  
  
"Like *what*?" I asked.  
  
"I fear you will have to tell me," said the copy. "You must know better than I."  
  
I had to think about it. There were plenty of things I could remember failing at... but usually, Lina had returned to them later and mastered them on the second or third try. What had she ever really failed to do, failed in a way that hurt? Being thrown out of restaurants didn't count.  
  
"You aren't getting my sword," said Gloria, "if that's what you're thinking."  
  
"The Sword of Light?" asked the copy. "I created the Howling Sword for Zangulus. If you help me, I will make you a weapon more powerful than the Sword of Light."  
  
That should have been tempting, but somehow it wasn't. The Sword of Light didn't really seem so important as I'd always thought it had. What could I do, really? What would make me better than Lina?  
  
I shouldn't have been thinking about all this. I was being manipulated – the copy had me right where he wanted me and I was walking right into whatever he'd set up at the other end. It was obvious that there was something here a lot bigger than just him wanting to one-up Rezo... but somehow, I just couldn't stop myself.  
  
What could I do that couldn't be done by somebody who'd destroyed a piece of Shabrinigdo and bent Chaos itself to her will?  
  
But then... for all that, Lina was only the world's *second* most powerful sorceress, wasn't she?  
  
"Could you teach me more magic?" I asked the copy.  
  
For the first time, it actually looked like I'd surprised him. "What could I possibly teach to somebody who can cast the Giga Slave?"  
  
"Well, you know there's still somebody more powerful than Lina, right?" I said.  
  
"Oh, yes," he nodded. "Her sister is the Knight of Ciephede, is she not?"  
  
"Exactly," I told him. "That's what Lina has never been able to do. She's never been better at anything than her sister. If I'm going to surpass Lina, the way to do it is by surpassing Luna, too."  
  
The copy considered it. "Very well," he decided. "Help me, and I can tell you where to find the Claire Bible."  
  
Now, *that* was tempting. I leaned forward in my seat. "You have a manuscript?"  
  
"I have several," he affirmed, "but I also know where the original is kept."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Oh, yes. Rezo never got the opportunity to visit the place himself, but he was confident of its location."  
  
The *original* Claire Bible. Anybody who had that *would* be the most powerful sorcerer ever... the Claire Bible was a repository of magical knowledge created by the dying Water Dragon King, after the War of the Monster's Resurrection. Various people who'd come in contact with it had copied parts out into manuscripts, but nobody had heard of the original in centuries.  
  
If I had that... I was thinking exactly what the copy of Rezo wanted me to think, I knew, but it was impossible to argue with him when he was right. And if I messed up and got myself killed casting the Giga Slave for him, it wasn't as if anybody was going to miss me.  
  
"Do we have a bargain, then?" he asked. "The Giga Slave for the Claire Bible."  
  
I didn't trust him. There was more here than met the eye, and I ought to look deeper before diving in. I was walking into a trap.  
  
But I didn't have anywhere else to go, did I? Maybe if I was smart, I could stay on top of him.  
  
"A bargain," I offered a hand.  
  
The copy of Rezo accepted and shook it. "Excellent!" he said. "Now, there are some things I must do." 


End file.
